Soy-based spray foam insulation is making inroads with the surge in "Green" building today. It is a polyurethane foam that instead of using petroleum as a base, utilizes soy beans (a renewable plant source). Among it's many advantages are:
1.) it has NO voc's, NO urea, or NO ozone depleting CFS's or HCFC's.
2.) it has a high fire rating
3.) it is light weight &
4.) it has excellent thermal & acoustical properties. (3.6 R* or better per inch of thickness)
As far as I can tell, there are three major players in the soy-based foam insulation market, with several distributors and installers for both. These two companies are BioBased Insulation with it's BioBased 501 & BioBased 2000, EMEGA Technologies & USSC (Urethane Soy Systems Company) with it's Soytherm 50 product. All have web sites, as you can see, linked here.
According to BioBased Insulation, up to a 50% energy saving can be achieved verses traditional methods. For this savings, you can expect a premium over traditional methods as well. But then again, BioBased Insulation states, for every $1000 premium spent on BioBased Insulation home owners will increase their mortgage by $6-$7. This upgrade is easily surpassed by the first month's and subsequent monthly savings in energy costs. I can reasonably assume that these numbers would be the same for EMEGA Technologies & USSC insulation, or at least the differences would be negligible. You may want to contact each company in order to get their individual take on their products compared to the others. You may also, if so inclined, do some research on each company and what their philosophies are and what business ethical standards they adhere to.
I have just touched on the basics for Soy-based spray foam insulation here, but if you want to do some more searching, please feel free to use the search bar above, or check out these links:
* R-value is a number indicating the resistance of heat or cold flow through a substance. The higher the R-value the more resistance there is to that flow, thus, for insulating purposes, the higher the R-value the better.
Friday, August 31, 2007
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