Insulating your home provides you with numerous benefits when it works properly. It helps keep your utility bills lower, it provides sounds insulation and should keep critters out of your walls.
Deciding to put insulation in your home often represents the easiest part of the process. Thereafter, you need to choose the type you want in your home. You probably heard about the popularity of spray foam insulation. It does provide certain benefits, but it also has some potentially serious drawbacks that you need to know about before making your decision.
What are the drawbacks?
You may be thinking that the drawbacks would need to be significant in order to top the benefit of spray foam insulation filling all of the nooks and crannies between your walls. Nothing could get through it, and the last thing you want is to hear animals inside your walls — or at worst, dying between them. It also purports to keep air, bugs and moisture out of your home. These are pretty big benefits, but so are the potential downsides. Consider the following:
- The technicians applying it to your home must wear respirators and hazardous material suits. You may dismiss this as an indicator of a problem since they use the insulation in its liquid form, but the danger doesn’t necessarily end once it cures.
- The chemicals used can adversely affect your health immediately, which is why only licensed professionals can apply it.
- You cannot be present when the insulation is applied. In fact, you must remain away from your home for a minimum of 24 hours.
- If you enter your home or come into contact with the chemicals before it fully cures, it could affect your health.
- If the insulation is not appropriately applied, it could crack and expose you to health hazards.
- If any moisture does get into your home after installation, it can’t go anywhere because your home is airtight. You could end up with toxic mold in your home.
- Spray home insulation is permanent, which is good and bad.
- If cracks develop, or it failed to cure properly, you may not be able to do anything about it. If the situation gets bad enough, you may not even be able to live in the home anymore because of the lingering hazards.
As you can see, some particularly substantial drawbacks can happen when using spray foam insulation. A good portion of them relates to improper installation. If you do end up with issues due to the insulation, you may be able to pursue compensation for your losses from the insulation company. If you need to know more about your rights and legal options, you could make use of Montgomery’s legal resources.
