Current Status

The bad news

I am becoming cranky AND crotchety AND air-headed. I need to get organized to resolve that! It's odd getting pushed into doing something big you didn't expect. I am usually very prepared and have thought through everything in advance. Right now I feel pushed to catch up with where reality is.

I just want my sink and one gas burner! Whine, moan, self-pity.

The good news
We are sporting a nice robins egg blue from the first layer of insulation. It gives me some hope! Judging from the smell - the foam in the plaster walls of the second floor above the kitchen also dried out and the smell of wet foam has decreased. dh is very sensitive to mold and has just about stopped reacting. My long term fear, of course, is that the rest of the house will grow mold - or never dry out - or both.

In the end, we decided to pad out the walls by 3/4". The existing framing was very rough - the drywall was glued (who knew?). It would have taken close to forever to get enough of the glue scraped off to yield flat walls. This gave some extra room for insulation - all to the good. The first layer of insulation is nice - Polyisocyanurate. Now, we are Super Tuff-R. The difference with only 3/4" installed is amazing.

The second layer will be some new jazzy stuff called Safertouch that acts like fiberglass in r value and fitting, is soft and fluffy but you don't need gloves or masks to handle it. It doesn't need to be stapled either. So help me, it looks like quilt batting and made from recycled materials. It will be installed next week.

We ran a water test with a hose, followed by three days of actual rain and got no leaks! The foam installer tried to say that the water in the walls came from another source. The test was to make sure there wasn't another source of leaks. We feel relieved that there wasn't and it was safe to go ahead and install.

The not-so-good news
The electric! We found some corrosion in the outlets, the nails holding the blue boxes and the wire staples - so those are all being replaced.

Taking the opportunity of having the walls opened, we are moving the telephone jack to a more sensible place and the backsplash outlets down 2 inches. We are changing the lighting a bit because of the counter height seating area is deeper than the breakfast bar. The single ceiling fixture will be swapped for pendants.

We found ants. When we invited them to leave, they refused. Unfortunately, they all were poisoned and died. My kitchen is a mass grave. I wrote a prayer in sharpie on the insulation.

The foam contractor offered us $400, "not admitting any fault, but in the interests of customer service, or, we can insulate the newly remodeled kitchen after its completion for no charge." We wrote them back offering that they pay $4700 - which is the current budget - not including the electric or painting.

We are consulting a lawyer this week and are "in production" of a little video. Retrofoam is heavily sold as nonflammable. We became curious when the contractor accused us of faking a mold photograph and implied we had scorched it removing the drywall. Leaving aside the fascinating issue of how one removes drywall with a blow torch -- we kinda,sorta lit a chunk of Retrofoam with a household lighter. It starts turning black at 5 seconds and ignites at around 20-30 secs.

The RetroFoam v. Jet-Puffed ignition smackdown video was born. We got the Jet-Puffs (candy aisle if you are looking) but it won't quit raining, so our production is in hiatus until sun. Retrofoam isn't supposed to fume either.   It doesn't smell terribly bad while burning. But you can "see" a lot of stuff in the air around it so we don't want to film indoors.

Why are those holes important?

Small repetition - RetroFoam is installed from the outside in.  They bring a large truck, several people and a lot of mixing equipment and a big ol' hammer drill.  They drill holes all over the outside at a more or less even pattern.  Some magic melting pot in the truck mixes the foam powder with water and forces it out under pressure into the holes.  They stop putting it in when it squirts back out the hole  --
or when your plaster starts to crack.  They have a "listener" inside of your house following the install and listening for cracking - so the wall doesn't blow out.  The other thing the listener does is watch to see if the foam squirts out of a switchplate or outlet cover.

When the foam squirts out inside, the "listener" or a general helper washes it off with water.   On the outside of the house, they use a hose.    They start at the bottom of the house and fill each stud bay moving upwards.

Our house is stucco.  Unlike wood, vinyl, shinges or hardiplanks, water doesn't drip off of stucco.  It clings and slinks downwards until it hits a drip edge.  Drip edges are moldings (or mouldings for the technically correct) attached to the tops of windows, doors and before the end of the stucco right before the bandboard done in the 1920's.  Water runs off the house and onto the ground at a drip edge. Today, windows are made without drip edges for installation in stucco.  That's what we have because we replaced the original windows.

For all you architecture buffs, they weren't the actual orginal windows - they were just the windows that came with the house when we bought it.  The previous owner had replaced the windows with very inexpensive ones from the big box store and they leaked air, so we re-replaced them.  We specifically pointed out the obvious stucco repairs from 10 years ago when the windows were re-replaced and warned the installation crew chief that the framing in those areas was odd.  The framing is important even more later than this.

This image shows a sample of the wet areas we found.  Each wet area was growing mold.  We outlined the damp area in lime green. Poor counter!

This is a close up of the bottom of the dry wall partly still attached.  You can just see our orange highlight of the wet line.   Gravity works!  This area was behind cabinets.

This is a piece of the dry wall immediately to the left of the picture above with its charming three colored mold.  This section was behind a cabinet - one that had mold growing in the back.

And finally, this is a picture of mold growing on RetroFoam.  This is two different samples from two locations.  We have a third nice brick red one.  Summit Insulation actually accused us of either faking this photograph or singeing the insulation while removing the drywall.

What was interesting about the claim of fakery was that we told them we KEPT THE ACTUAL SAMPLES.  The claim of singeing the foam just led to asking questions like:

1. What form of removing drywall involves a torch?
2. What other ways could the foam be singed?
3. What does it take to set Retrofoam on fire?
4. Isn't Retrofoam supposed to be nonflammable?

Oh, right, I was talking about water. More on fire later. See what happens when you get older and your kitchen is nearly destroyed?

Most wet foam was at a framing "end" where a cross member stopped the stud bay.  There is a hammer drill scar about 6 inches above the obstruction on both sides of that 2x4 in the center.  See the water marks where the white dissolved foam fluid flowed out of the bottom of this area.  The drywall removed from this area and the area below was full of mold (and stank).   This area was not below a window.  It is where we had a window removed.

After drywall removal, insulation removal, mold removal and stud cleanup, we retested both exterior walls for leaks.  We used a fat garden hose with a high pressure head set on "jet" and then did some flood.  We stayed on each wall section and window for at least 5 minutes and had no evidence of leaks.  Subsequent to our test, it rained for 3 days in a row with no evidence of leaks. 

Since the wet insulation was under the hammered sheathing holes, we believe the wet drywall and insulation to be caused by the installation of Retrofoam and applying water to the drywall by the "listener" inside of the kitchen and too much water to the outside of the house while the holes were still open.

We not sure he was the "listener" or a helper.  Because we didn't know Retrofoam was going to flow into the outlet boxes, we had taken the cover plates off and some bric-a-brac down in preparation for painting.  While the installation was occuring, I visited the kitchen to be greeted by the sight of a worker trying to mop up foam from the counters and walls by putting a lot of water on.

Afterwards, I realized they never asked about the wiring before installing the foam.  Mostly, we had run new electricity and the kitchen had every bit of wire replaced at the same time we did the windows, but we do have some wiring of uncertain vintage and some knob and tube.  Insulation can't be installed with knob and tube - the insulation raising the temperature of the wire is a fire hazard.

Hammer Time

Our home has stucco siding,mostly from the 1920's.   The foam is installed from the outside of the house by drilling holes into the wall cavities.  Summit Insulation used a hammer drill with masonry bit to drill through the stucco layer.  

Hammer drills have a clutch lock that is supposed to be engaged when drilling through wood. The setting and bit apparently weren’t changed for the solid wood and plywood sheathing – causing the sheathing to shatter where drilled.  These big openings become important later.

The blue circles surround the shattered areas - the baby blue outlet box can give an idea of the scale.

Below are two beautiful examples - close ups of the drilled areas inside of the house both on the plywood sheathing from a 1999 installation of replacement windows and the original 1920's board sheathing.  The board sheathing picture shows the hole as cleaned during the removal process.  Luckily, the wood chips from this actual location  were saved and are on display in the third photo - with a quarter for scale.  The drilled hole was supposed to be 3/8" - slightly less than 1/2 of the diameter of the quarter.

The hammered sheathing evidences lack of care on the part of the installers to us.  Every hole uncovered by the drywall/installation removal was shattered.

More Full Disclosure:

I am not an engineer.  My charming spouse is an engineer - but not in this subject.  Neither the owner of Summit Insulation nor any of the install staff are engineers.  We believe we have drawn reasonable conclusions from looking at the evidence left behind in our walls.  This is our opinion.  We invite you to form your own conclusions from viewing the photos.

We believe Summit Insulation should pay for the damages to our home.  In part, we are going public in the hopes that they will pay for the new drywall and the associated costs for what needed to be destroyed to control mold.

We aren't made of money. We have a small house on a small lot in Baltimore, MD.  I would like to win the lottery - but not by extorting extra money from Summit Insulation or PolyMaster.  No pain and suffering - which, if you've ever tried to cook pancakes on a GE hot plate is substantial.  Not asking for the painting - we were going to paint it anyway. Not even asking for money for the time we personally spent (and will spend) cleaning up the joint, helping to kill mold, and running the supply ferry from the big orange box store.  No asking for them to replace all of the cabinets - most of which were not growing mold.  The ones that were damaged can be fixed by replacing some parts.  Not asking for other extraneous stuff.

We would like them to pay for the direct damages they caused.  We think that's fair.

Never let your carpenter go the big box store.  They get more done if you go and get whatever it is they need.  Electricians on the other hand, have everything on earth out in the vans they drive around in.

What my kitchen looks like today

Before Summit Insulation came

Full Disclosure:  I am a kitchen freak.  I really enjoy kitchen designs and the thoughts, hopes and plans of people who bring their kitchens to life.  Adding life can be as simple as redecoration for two hundred bucks or as complicated as re-fitting a salvage kitchen into a new space.

I belong to a forum site filled with  people who will or have remodelled or redecorated their kitchen.  It's called the kitchen forum on Gardenweb. 

We redid our kitchen about 3 years ago.  Below are some photos when it was almost complete - some trim is missing at the top of the tall stack. It also shows two of the planning drawings that went to a cabinet maker called Scherrs. They sent the cabinets flat packed in the crates.

Since the kitchen was completed, we repainted - the taupe-gray was a bit hard to live with. We had planned on painting again after the insulation was installed because the paint job was starting to look worn. We had purchased the paint and it was sitting in the hall when the installers arrived on August 12th, 2009. I had taken a few of the doo-dahs off the walls in preparation for painting.

We wanted to paint the house...

If you ever find yourself using the words:

"While we're at it, we might as well..."

Stop immediately, close yer trap and move on.

We finished that statement with "check into insulation" and thereby were doomed.   Come on a journey into remodelling hell. It's  been 64 days since a simple installation of RetroFoam insulation went horribly wrong.  So far, we lost the kitchen drywall on the exterior walls entirely, paid $1700 for plaster repairs, $1100 for drywall removal, need to pay a stone fabricator and have about $3600 left to pay if the lastest budget holds.  It doesn't include whatever else may be wrong in the house but it does include re-installing my kitchen sink.