After the deconstruction of the center room ceiling, the long work of cleaning the attic finally wrapped up in the fall of 2022. The last bag of fiberglass insulation, crumbling plaster, and pest waste descended into the center room floor just as outdoor temperatures began to drop. The time had finally come to conclude the work in the attic by replacing the insulation.
Not being fans of fiberglass’s health and environmental drawbacks, we started the project looking into safer, more sustainable alternatives.
After a long campaign of research and discussion, we ultimately decided opt for close-cell spray foam insulation.
(If you’re strictly here for the before and after photos, those show up towards the end of this post!)
The Why
Even with plenty of ventilation available to allow the attic to “breathe” during the summer, under the sun’s withering glare, our attic swelled with such intense heat that work up there had been unbearable between mid-morning and sunset. Large wooden grates vented directly to the outside on three walls. Air circulating vents ran the length of every ridge and eve of the new metal roof.
By contrast, the foam would require that we seal the attic off entirely from outside air.
The hope was that a change of insulation tactics would not only better manage temperature fluctuations but would also help us to better keep out the mist, mice, and bugs — which had wrought such disaster in the attic prior to our owning it.
The What
The foam would need to seal all of the intentional openings as well as the hundreds of less intentional gaps in the siding where air and insects exchanged with the wild outdoors. No small task — but it was necessary to ensure that temperate air stayed inside and that microbe-friendly moisture wouldn’t become trapped in the inaccessible spaces between foam and wood.
For extra reassurance that we’d done our research correctly, we called up the man who had installed our roof almost 3 years ago. Not only did he enthusiastically endorse closed-cell foam insulation, but he regaled us with his many personal experiences with installing it in his own home.
One drawback we had read about for spray foam insulation was the possibility of it trapping water between itself and the the structure it is adjacent to. The roofer, however, shared that water issues would be something to consider primarily with a roof that would be unlikely to match the the foam’s lifespan. A less-than-3-year-old metal roof, expected to last half a century at least, would be the perfect pairing for this insulation type.
After talking with him, we felt confident in our choice of closed-cell foam insulation. Open-cell foam, he told us, was not particularly useful as a hearty insulation material. He generously told us what kinds of questions to ask to weed out unscrupulous or inexperienced insulators.
The Who
Spray foam insulation requires a specific chemical reaction to occur under the right conditions, which means amateur installation can be a more risky undertaking. Getting the chemical reaction wrong may not just mean you have an ineffective material but it may also be harmful to work with. For this reason, we enlisted professional help.
We found a company with a reasonable price and all the right answers: The owners, a married couple who split the field- and office-work of the company between them, were not only knowledgeable and practical-minded but also friendly and accommodating.
The How
A 2-person team of one of the owners and one assistant arrived about a week before Christmas in a large truck that housed all of the pumps, tanks, hoses, and tools they’d need to do the job.
At first, they estimated it would take 4 days to finish the work, maybe 5. Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate. Freezing rain impacted the truck’s chemical hose, lowering the temperature so much that the materials could not set properly.
(To add yet another wrinkle, the ground also became so saturated that the heavily loaded work truck parked outside sank into the mud and couldn’t get out again until the weather changed over the following weekend.)
But the work did manage to get done. The foam, which when dry resembled a coating of whipped cream, looked as though it would give way under a firm prod the way that dried caulk can. In reality, the foam had dried with a consistency somewhere between wood and hard plastic.
With great effort, the pair of insulators had even managed to squeeze into the tight, inconveniently designed spaces between the lower, shallow-sloped sections of the roof and the kitchen/living room/sunroom ceilings — something they thought had been impossible before.
By crawling belly-first and pushing a long hose extender ahead of them through narrow openings and over/under obstructions, they had exceeded our expectations: Insulating foam now filled fully encased every space beneath the roof from the eaves to the ridge.
The End
After a hiatus for the holidays, the small crew finished the work, and we arrived to a fully-insulated Rockleaf for the first time in the early new year.
The look of the attic had completely transformed. Its wood and exposed metal largely now resembled an ice cave or a styrofoam cooler.
The hundreds of cracks, vents, gaps, and holes that lit the attic during the day were all filled. The space had become a secure shell. More so than at any other time since its construction, Rockleaf’s roof now kept the outside out and the inside in.
It had become normal to expect the inside temperature to at least partially reflect the outside. It came as a surprise, then, when one day it stopped being the case!
Without access to a weather forecast, having gotten used to accurately judging the weather outside the house by feeling the air in the kitchen, it was something of a rude (and then wonderful) revelation to discover one morning that it was MUCH colder out than Justin had expected it to be.
Justin’s initial outrage at having been ambushed by the frigid bite of the morning air quickly turned into excitement and reassurance that we had made the right choice.
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And now for the before and after photos of the cleaned, empty attic and the insulated attic.
Rockleaf Haven 
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