The unplanned rework of our lower basement was the courtesy of the flooding we experienced due to the July 2013 storm. As we started to repair the damage it became apparent that the previous owners took a lot of short cuts when they originally finished the basement. Rather than just patch up the damage and move forward we decided to fix all of the issues which meant stripping all of the exterior walls back to the bare concrete, re-framing the walls and starting fresh. As we had removed all of the previous fiberglass insulation we started to explore what options were available to re-insulate the basement walls. Initially we examined going the traditional route of fiberglass, or Styrofoam board on the concrete followed by fiberglass on the walls.
However both of these approaches in our mind had several disadvantages. The concrete was not completely square, straight or plumb so gluing fiberglass boards to the walls would result in gaps, the header joist (source of most drafts) would be hard to insulate properly, the material (fiberglass) would be susceptible to water damage if it ever happened again, vapour sealing the basement would be more challenging and overall the wall thickness would increase by a couple of inches if we wanted R18-20 on all the exterior walls.
Working with Alex from Insta-Insulation who we found very professional and knowledgeable about the products and their application, we determined that 2lb foam was the best material for our needs, in our mind it had none of the disadvantages listed above, and would get me the ~R18 I was looking for in the “thinnest” wall that was possible and was very cost competitive to the other approaches.
Alex was also extremely helpful when he came and visited the basement to determine any challenges that the installers could have as they worked around existing interior walls or ceilings that were not being affected by the work. In a number of cases we cut back the existing ceiling by a bit to allow the installers good access to the header joist so that they could seal them up tight.
On the day of the installation the guys were on site early, covered and protected all of the items that could get effected by some over-spray and were helpful in answering all questions that we had about the process. They were very polite, professional and courteous and were complete in the time that they estimated and left the area clean and tidy.
Overall we are extremely pleased with the work that Insta-Insulation did and already plan to have them back to tackle the upper basement. I cannot recommend a company more highly than Insta-Insulation for any service they provided.
