Tried spray foam insulation in my garage ceiling in Nashville - half cured right, half dripped down for 20 minutes

I used a cheap kit from the big box store thinking it would be straightforward, but the temperature difference in my garage wrecked the consistency. Has anyone else had luck with the expensive commercial kits over the budget stuff?

2 comments

2 Comments

paigem451mo ago

Did you check the can temperature before you started? I read somewhere that those DIY kits are super picky about being between 60 and 80 degrees, and Nashville garages get way hotter than that even in the shade. The professional kits probably have better nozzles and a more stable chemical mix, but they're a lot more expensive and you need a special gun for them. Some people online say the cheap stuff works fine if you just warm the cans in a bucket of hot water first. What kind of foam thickness were you going for?

piper_burns1mo agoMost Upvoted

I used to be pretty dismissive of the whole temperature thing, figured it was just overblown advice from people who didn't know what they were doing. But after ruining two cans of that cheap foam in my own garage last summer, I'm totally on board with checking temps now. You're dead right about Nashville garages, even in the shade the concrete just bakes all day and those cans get way hotter than 80 degrees. I never bothered with the hot water bucket trick but I bet that works for the same reason, just getting everything to that happy zone. Did you find a big difference between the cheap and pro kits after you started watching temps, or does the warm water trick fix the cheap stuff enough?