 16 MAG RUFFMAN TOOL GIRLFoam here to eternityIfyou had a sleeping bag when you were little, you know how much fun it is to squirm down into the bottom of the bag and then shoot out like a turbo caterpillar. And you also know, if your brother had an insensitive streak, what it's like to be trapped inside your sleeping bag because someone is sitting on the top opening. The lifelong claustrophobia that resulted from this incident may surface when you have to enter crawl spaces under your house to inspect a plumbing issue or perhaps to perform insulation duties. So if you've ever wondered how well you'd do in solitary confinement like Steve McQueen in Papillon, I can probably answer that for you.: Not well, not well at all. And I proved this recently when I donned a Tyvek suit to add a layer of Insulating Air Sealant Foam to a cinder block wall and rim joist at the far end of a 12-foot crawl space. I had shimmied all the way to the end of the narrow tunnel when the panic hit. My heart rate shot up to infinity and the screams coming out of my Darth Vader look-alike mask were a sound-byte from a documentary on the criminally insane. Clawing off the respirator and goggles I shot out of the hole backwards like a hermit crab on amphetamines. FOAM STICKER Like so many things in life, you get over hurdles because you have to. As your mum would say, "That crawl space isn't going to foam itself." So I went back in to the spiderfilled tunnel and managed to calm down enough to go through 35 cans of high-expansion air sealant foam on walls, headers and rim joists. While I came to enjoy using the small cans of foam, they're expensive, the contents don't go very far, and the finished effect is eccentric at best since it tends to bubble irregularly depending on surface humidity. And it takes hours, since, to be economical, you have to go slowly, laying in a very thin bead so that you don't discharge all of the propellant in a violent spurt that sounds like a possessed cappuccino machine. Chagrinned that my $314 worth of canned foam took so long to apply (four hours) and covered such a small area (52 square feet), I wanted to find something more economical, faster, and easier to use when it was time to protect the unfinished basement's cinder block walls from moisture migration, condensation, thermal conduction and mould/mildew. A knowledgeable friend recommended Tiger Foam Inc, a Canadian company based in Sarnia, Ontario. JUST KITTING So I called them. They answered all of my questions about application, procedures, and the dos and don'ts of foam air sealant and vapour barriers. It sounded easier than I expected to use the Tiger Foam kit, and way faster than using small cans. I picked up a 600-square foot polyurethane air sealant foam kit ($760) from one of Tiger's distribution locations and sure enough, I had a completely different experience than my finger-numbing round with the tiny cans of foam sealant. For one thing, the process is lightning fast. It took only two hours to spray more than ten times the area I'd covered with the little cans. The two-tank Tiger Foam kit comes with a couple of nozzle styles that dispense foam in either a fanshaped spray (for walls), or a bead (for gap-filling). The fan nozzle sprays a four- to 12-inch wide swath of foam that goes on really fast and then puffs up to the depth of one inch. The foam cures almost instantly and forms a barrier that stops condensation (which fiberglass insulation doesn't do) because there's no longer an accessible cold surface for humid air to condense on. So mould and mildew is locked out. The happy result is that after applying the air sealant foam barrier, our basement now smells nice instead of musty and mildewy. TIPS: * Keep the tanks warm. Heat them in the sun (or use an electric blanket if there's no sun) and then put them in a bin filled with hot water while you use them. They cool down quickly as you use the contents, so it's really important to keep the tanks toasty (between 75 and 85 F.). * Do it in warm weather. The time to apply foam is not as winter is set- ting in, but during the warm summer months or early fall. It's easier to keep the tanks warm, and the surface temperature of the walls you're foaming should be above 60 degrees. (If you foam when the wall surface is really cold, the wall material sucks the heat out of the curing foam and the foam doesn't rise as high and therefore doesn't provide as much R-value.) * Be calm. When you first use the triggering mechanism on the foaming gun you're likely to press too hard. The foam comes shooting outAir sealing your basement and crawl spacesat high speed and you panic and it goes everywhere. Plus you waste propellant. So just squeeze gently, and you'll find the foam emerges at a manageable pace and you feel relaxed and artful in your application. * Get help. It's insanely helpful to have someone watching your back, moving the bin containing the tanks and hot water (put the bin on a furniture dolly so it rolls easily to a new location), and keeping your hoses clear of obstacles. If you pause more than 30 seconds you must change the nozzle tip (they include Do-it-yourself air foam sealant creates a barrier against moisture, heat, cold and mould. The Toronto Sun SEPTEMBER 9 & 11, 2011 many spares) since the chemicals will start to set up in the nozzle, so having a helper reduces nozzle changes. Using Tiger Foam's large canisters (available for 200 or 600 square feet) saves time, money and the stuff goes on way more evenly. Just do it while the weather's warm. For more info, visit tigerfoam.ca or call (888) 844-3736. - Mag Ruffman appears weekdays on "Real Life," on CTS. Visit her online at www.toolgirl.com.
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