Just having a chap round to price up solar panels, and he’s pushing us to have spray foam roof insulation too – the solar’s a no-brainer, but I’m not so keen on the foam. It’s open-cell water-blown Icnyne stuff which he (inevitably) says is the orsumz, but doesn’t all spray foam stuff cause issues locking moisture inside the roof, or something?

I looked at this for a small loft area. Asked about on here and no-one had a good word to say about it.

They still won’t.
Avoid!

APF

Perhaps they are not the solar installation company you are looking for…

Under no circumstances do it.

And as above, I’d question their integrity now.

A recent thread with various (non-too-positive) thoughts

Spray foam loft insulation – advice needed

I had a survey done a while back, and declined it, having read some less than scintillating reports about it. They phoned me back a couple of weeks or so ago, and I said that maybe I’d be interested if they were covering the costs… he just hung up on me. 😁

We’ve got it in our house. It was there when we moved in. 1950’s semi detached council house. No idea when it was installed but at a guess the 80’s? Anyway when we get snow or frost our house is the last on our road to thaw. The loft is never freezing cold, is dry and doesn’t smell mouldy. Our old house, early 90’s build would get condensation on the membrane under the tiles when we opened the loft hatch. We had new soffits and facias fitted here ten years ago, when they ripped off the old woodwork the roof trusses were fine with no rot.

surely it depends on teh roof?

if you have a sealed roof system its not too bad as there shouldnt be moisture up there.

if you have a ventilated roof space the insulation needs o go on teh roof floor to work properly

I`d bet most people (including installers) have no flipping idea which type of roof they are looking at hence the issues

Bank wouldn’t approve a buyers mortgage on my old house because of it, had to reduce the price and retention was held on their full mortgage until the work was done

Was there in 2012 when the house was bought and a survey issue in 2018 when sold

Yeah, it’s not guaranteed to rot your roof, and I’ve heard from a guy who removes it for a living (for mortgage purposes) that he rarely uncovers issues when it comes off.

It’s just the uncertainty about what it might do, and the potential for it to hide existing issues or even be used to stop a roof falling in.

Hence it’s likely to make it very difficult to get a mortgage, if a survey is conducted.

I was part of the team that developed the original PU foam sprayed systems 35+ years ago.

The foam itself and how its applied is fine – but as commented on above the people installing/spraying it couldn’t give a monkeys how or why it was being applied. They wouldn’t be around long enough as a company to honour any warranties. It was never picked up by any big national companies ie Rentokill/British Gas etc – it was always a load of gear slung in the back of a scratty 7.5t truck that I inevitably ended up working on.

Stick with Kingspan / conventional loft insulation.

Perhaps they are not the solar installation company you are looking for…

Anyone else reading this in an Obi Wan voice?

But yes, this, avoid the foam, avoid the firm.

Thanks for the answers, friends. Interested to have a look at the solar stuff they specced and quoted for (9 panels, 5.2kw battery and some kind of smart inverter thing for £11k?) but deeply suspicious of the upsell to roof insulation. It’s not that we’re against it – it’s just not what we called them round for, and the “special price” (£2.5k) was dependent on them using the commercial rig that happened to be round the corner on Friday. Still interested in the solar stuff, but we’ve cancelled the spray insulation for now.

I can understand how old people get gently nudged into paying out a fortune – god, please keep me cynical…