Comments on: Soy Based Spray Foam

By: John Griffiths

John Griffiths — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 00:29:54 +0000

In order for a product to claim that it is “bio-based” 30% of the B-component needs to come from renewable, agricultural resources. Since the B-component is only half of the system this actually translates into 15%. It is hardly “made from soy-beans.” Not only that but the physical properties of the finished foam are inferior to well known non-soy products ie Bayer.

By: BlackHat

BlackHat — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 17:16:59 +0000

I have also tried another product – Dap Latex Foam. The promise of latex, water clean-up and the implied benefits of eco paled when you actually compared the performance of the product against Great Stuff. Like the soy product mentioned above, the latex product, once dried, quickly turns to dust if brushed up against or disturbed. It slowly delaminates from the building substrates you are trying to seal, calling into question it’s energy claims. What’s more, it easily wicks moisture. Add them together, air penetration, moisture and dust, and you have the perfect ingredients for mold….. growing behind your walls. I’ll use Great Stuff from now on. It works.

By: Gennaro Brooks-Church

Gennaro Brooks-Church — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 02:48:18 +0000

I have it from a pretty good source that they have 5% spray foam in one of their two parts. Which means it is about 2.5% total. It is greenwashing crap.
I’ll take the company that is honest and simply admits their product is petrochemical based and then tries to make the argument that it is worth it due to the energy efficiency etc, or whatever they honestly believe.

By: fuerza

fuerza — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 22:53:16 +0000

I, too, have come across a myriad of companies that give me that ‘proprietary’ line of crap. When I hear that I quickly add them to my blog of companies to avoid. If you can’t tell me what I am using, touching, ingesting, breathing, etc..then you don’t get my business and I will go out of my way as a consumer to warn people to avoid such companies.

By: SPF Contractor

SPF Contractor — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 17:09:10 +0000

In college I worked for one of the largest spray foam contractors in the country and installed Bio-Based foams for several years. Like the author, ee also could not find any information from Bio-Based regarding the soy content of their open-cell spray foam insulation. This foam is in 55 gallon drums, not cans, and is used for foaming entire buildings. Anyway,we were concerned Bio-Biobased’s behavior and we paid for third party testing of the sprayed product…the results were not good. “Bio-Based” spray foam turned out to contain less than 5% Bio-Content. We were disappointed to say the least, and threatened with a lawsuit once we confronted Bio-Based about their fraud. We had been paying more money for what we thought was a green product and telling our customers that it was soy based. In reality the foam has far lower yields than standard open-cell foams, so even if it had a Soy content of 20% it still would end up taking more foam (and Chemicals) for the same job. Pretty pathetic case of Green Washing.