Spray Foam Insulation in Cincinnati, OH

Spray foam insulation in Cincinnati usually starts with an old house. American Community Survey figures reported by Point2Homes put the city's median year built at 1951, and 40.8% of its housing units date from 1939 or earlier. Those homes, from Over-the-Rhine's brick rows to the frame houses on Price Hill, Northside and Westwood, were built when nobody sealed an attic floor or filled a wall. The fix is rarely a single product. It is sealing the right leaks, then insulating each space with the material that suits it.

Brick rows and frame two-stories

Over-the-Rhine's buildings went up mostly between 1865 and the 1880s, and many city neighborhoods followed with brick and frame houses into the early 1900s. Solid brick walls are generally better left uninsulated from the inside, so the useful work happens at the top and bottom of the building: sealing and insulating the attic or roof, and sealing the rim and foundation. Frame houses from the same period are often balloon framed, with wall cavities open from basement to attic, and sealing those channels can change how a house feels in January.

Hillside foundations

Cincinnati spreads over hills, bluffs and ridges above the Ohio, and lots of homes step down the slope with a walkout basement on one side. The uphill wall is mostly buried and the downhill wall is exposed, so the basement can be cool and damp on one end and drafty on the other. We treat the rim joist and exposed walls with closed-cell foam and look at whether the buried walls are dry enough to insulate.

Summer counts as much as winter

The airport's climate record shows about 27 days a year at 90F or above and an average July dew point near 64F. A third-floor bedroom under an empty attic is miserable by mid-July. Sealing the attic floor and blowing insulation to depth, or spraying foam under the roof of a finished attic room, is often the single most noticeable improvement in a city house.

Code in Hamilton County

The Residential Code of Ohio places Hamilton County in Climate Zone 4A. The state's table lists R-49 for ceilings, R-20 or R-13 plus R-5 for wood-frame walls, and R-10 continuous or R-13 for basement and crawl space walls. Your city building department enforces code for new work and additions; for retrofits in an existing house, the targets are still a sensible benchmark.

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