House fires link to spray foam insulation installation

[clydewater]

http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/...m-installation


Hi
This is an interesting article. I also posted the link in the Materials and techniques section.
Care must be used when installing spray foam.
Thanks
Rich

[mreynolds]

Re: House fires link to spray foam insulation installation

Interesting. I know when they spray it the temp rises nearly 20-30 degrees in the attic till it sets.

[worthy]

Re: House fires link to spray foam insulation installation

After the welder is finished attaching posts to beams and plates, he always advises me to stay on site for several hours to watch for fire. How long must I stay on site after they've applied spf? Several days?? And what do I advise clients I'm managing builds for when I'm outlining the pros and cons of spf? That one drawback is that it may spontaneously self-combust for a few days after application?

[Dick Seibert]

Re: House fires link to spray foam insulation installation

Not only does it burn like crazy but it's a carcinogen, we have legislation in the Senate now to ban it in restaurants statewide, many cities have already banned it, some minority groups are calling it discriminatory.

Sacramento, CA (PRWEB) July 12, 2011

As many as 8,000 manufacturing and related jobs would likely vanish if special interest groups succeed in banning polystyrene (commonly referred to as Styrofoamâ„¢) food containers that are the lifeblood for several factories and small family and ethnic restaurants throughout California, according to a spokesman for a growing coalition of businesses and workers opposing the legislative proposal.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...#ixzz1S2rNvTei

I asked one group here about when they were going to go after it in insulation and they didn't even realize that it was used in construction, but said they will go after it once they get it banned in the food industry, get the current legislation passed then add other styrene products to the list of banned substances.

It's now been banned along with formaldehyde by the Stockholm Convention:

Formaldehyde, Styrene Added To Cancer Warning List

Despite intense pressure from the chemical industry, formaldehyde and styrene have been added to a government warning list of known and potentially carcinogenic compounds. Released June 10--four years late because of the opposition--the 12th Report on Carcinogens (RoC), compiled by the National Toxicology Program (NTP) under the aegis of the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), also adds six other substances to its list of 240 compounds.

But the listing of formaldehyde as a known carcinogen has generated the most heat, with industry claiming evidence of its carcinogenicity to be insufficient. The compound is predominantly used to make industrial resins, which are found in numerous consumer products including composite wood, pulp and paper, plastics, and synthetic fibers. It is also used as a disinfectant and antimicrobial agent.

Environmental groups applauded HHS for finally releasing the report and not caving to industry pressure. “The chemical industry has been fighting tooth-and-nail” to prevent the report from being finalized, says Jennifer Sass, senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The public has a right to know about the chemical risks that are foisted upon us.”¹

It's more than ironic that those here promoting it "to save the planet" are doing more damage to the planet as well as humanity than fossil fuels ever did or ever can do. It's also ironic that many uses of styrene also combine it with OSB, a product containing formaldehyde also banned by the same convention.


¹ http://sc.bcrc.cn/col/1253668419437/1309411996724.html

[clydewater]

Re: House fires link to spray foam insulation installation

Hi
IMHO I think we have traded one problem for another. My theory is since most building products no longer have Formaldehyde in them, we have now have more mold issues in buildings.

30 Years ago if you let a piece of Gyp Bd get wet, it did not turn black with mold. In fact when we had to bend it for a curved wall we would drape it over saw horses, lightly wet it several times and it would bend to shape due to gravity. Today if Gyp Bd gets wet it turns black in a few days (paper faced of course).

True our buildings are tighter today and moisture control is required, but by removing the Formaldehyde, we have created another set of problems with mold. Which is the bigger problem
Similar to the changes in PT wood. Stop using CCA and then you had major corrosion issues.
Rich

[worthy]

Re: House fires link to spray foam insulation installation

It's interesting to note in the linked story above that the NTP associate director, during a June 10 press briefing, concedes that, “The evidence that we’ve used for listing styrene is largely from industrial situations.”

[ThingOfBeauty]

Re: House fires link to spray foam insulation installation

I have seen SPF installers go way thicker than 2-3" in one go with closed cell.
Scary.
No styrene in spray polyurethane, FWIW.

[jrsavoie]

Re: House fires link to spray foam insulation installation

I liked reading the comments and am going back for more. I've been out of the loop for several years.

I've always been a fan of closed cell SPF. FOMO used to make a fire rated spray foam that was developed for coal mines.

Is there still such a product?I always thought it would catch on for residential applications

[Slaughter Construction Co]

Re: House fires link to spray foam insulation installation

I don't have a dog in this hunt, but I didn't see where it was stated that the foam was actually proven to be the cause of the fires. Maybe I missed it. Wouldn't be the first time.

[dgbldr]

Re: House fires link to spray foam insulation installation

I don't have a dog in this race either, but apparently soy insulation is no good either. It musta been a lot simpler in Dick's era, no flammables and no carcinogens in the caves, eh?

[ThingOfBeauty]

Re: House fires link to spray foam insulation installation

I don't have a dog in this race either, but apparently soy insulation is no good either. It musta been a lot simpler in Dick's era, no flammables and no carcinogens in the caves, eh?

Nah, wood smoke is full of carcinogens, including something like half the dioxins released into the environment in the US, per the EPA.

[Dick Seibert]

Re: House fires link to spray foam insulation installation

Nah, wood smoke is full of carcinogens, including something like half the dioxins released into the environment in the US, per the EPA.

Yeah I've done a lot of things wrong, like putting fireplaces in my homes, along with lead, asbestos, roof trusses and multi-pane windows are now coming back to haunt me. Wood smoke is 7 times more carcinogenic than tobacco smoke, so why are banning tobacco and not banning wood burning? The most we are doing is our no-burn days when atmospheric conditions are at the worst.

With the Dali Lama meeting with Obama yesterday, ostensibly to get us to pressure China to cede back Tibet's independence, I decided to research the worst mass murderers in history to see where the Chinese Communists ranked given Mao's atrocities and now the infanticide, I came across a right wing site that blew me away, claiming that Rachel Carson was the greatest mass murderer in the history of the world, in the end they even indict the entire environmental movement.

When most people think about mass genocide, they usually envision brutal dictators intentionally killing their own citizens. Few people, however, consider indirect causes of genocide, but these indirect causes are no less abominable. Without a doubt, the greatest indirect link to mass genocide is Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.

Recently, in a plea for sanity, the Uganda’s Minister of Health begged the western world to allow his citizens to use DDT. This is despicable. At this point, environmentalists are responsible for more deaths in Africa than colonialism. They say it is all to protect the precious biodiversity, but in reality, these moronic liberals only care about a clean place for them to live without being personally inconvenienced.

The evidence is overwhelming that just about every liberal policy in the history of the world has led to the deaths of millions of people. Moreover, liberals like Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, have been linked to the mass genocide of millions. Evidently, the environmentalists of today are no different.¹

No less than Freeman Dyson has condemned the Warmists saying that the vast amounts of money that they want spent on climate change would be much better spent on eradicating disease in the world, and even the somewhat less illustrious Joe Lstiburek said in his infamous wine cellar video that the banning of DDT was the biggest mistake ever made in the world.

The hypocrisy of the environmental movement is overwhelming, claiming to save the planet by eliminating fossil fuels while burning wood, when both wood smoke and fossil fuels return to earth to start the cycle of life all over again, but doing damage to the planet by filling the oceans and landfills with plastics that last millions of years and chemicals that may last longer than the plastics. In the end the millions of years it takes the planet to "digest" the plastics and chemicals is a heartbeat in time, and the earth, if sentient, must be laughing like Hell at the audacity of man.

The earth does have an overpopulation problem, Ironically burning wood is the biggest thinner of population in the world today, mostly in Africa and Asia, so the environmentalists just may be accomplishing their goal by "thinning the heard". We have "do-gooders" going into remote areas of Africa trying to teach the populations not to burn wood, while we have people right here in the United States that glorify the burning of wood, it's my opinion that they can't be that stupid, they are just cheap losers who want to tear the winners down to their lowly station in life.



¹ http://www.yoursdaily.com/different_..._mass_genocide

[MarkMc]

Re: House fires link to spray foam insulation installation

I gotta ask Dick, do you consider yourself an activist "do-bader?"

If I understand you we need to:

- eradicate disease by going back to DDT, a carcinogen and chemical emasculator, and that it's Carson's fault.

- that greenies are hypocrites because they fail to understand that burning stuff is actually good for us, and that it's Carson's fault.


- we should be burning wood to cull the herd because it's more efficient than mosquito's and tsetse, and that too is Carson's fault with additions by hypocrite greenies in the petro-chemical industry and free air movement all of whom are taking from you, Dick, a winner.

That about sum it up? A new plateau has been reached. You should be in DC helping with the demise of the burdensome regulators and and other takers rather than toying with us here.

[clydewater]

Re: House fires link to spray foam insulation installation

Boy, has this thread gone off track!!!

[Mark G]

Re: House fires link to spray foam insulation installation

My thoughts exactly. I was hoping to see some insight into the causes of the fires and what procedures to avoid them. I guess that was asking too much.