Spray foam insulation and air sealing for houses, basements, crawl spaces and pole barns across the Des Moines metro. We look at where your building is actually losing heat before anyone recommends a product.
Tell us what's going on and we'll come take a look.
What we do
The icicles are a symptom. The causes are the climate, the age of the houses, and the fact that Iowa's statewide energy code arrived long after most of them were built. Every number below is sourced.
Read the guide →Closed-cell and open-cell spray foam for Des Moines houses, basements, crawl spaces and steel buildings. Scoped for a climate with about 6,180 heating degree days a year, not a generic brochure.
Spray Foam Insulation →Ice dams, frost on the sheathing and a furnace that never rests all trace back to the attic floor. We seal it first, then insulate it to depth.
Attic Insulation & Air Sealing →Cold floors and drafty baseboards usually start at the rim joist and the crawl space below. Closed-cell foam closes both in one visit.
Crawl Space & Rim Joist Insulation →Two different materials for two different jobs. Here is how we decide which one goes where in a Central Iowa building.
Open-Cell vs. Closed-Cell Spray Foam →Steel sweats in an Iowa winter. Closed-cell foam on the roof and walls stops the drip, cuts the noise and makes a shop or shed worth heating.
Pole Barn & Metal Building Spray Foam →Finishing a basement in Des Moines? Closed-cell foam on the foundation wall insulates it, stops ground moisture and keeps the framing behind your drywall dry.
Basement Wall Insulation →Wet, rodent-soiled or century-old insulation does not get better with more on top. We take it out, seal what was leaking, and put the right material back.
Insulation Removal & Replacement →Why here
Polk County sits in IECC climate zone 5A, the U.S. Department of Energy's "cold" region, and the numbers back that up. NOAA's 1991-2020 normals for Des Moines International Airport put the January average temperature at 22.3 F with an average low of 13.8 F, roughly 128 nights a year at or below freezing, and about 10 nights at or below zero. The station's annual heating degree day total is about 6,180 (base 65 F). That is a long, hard heating season, and every gap in the thermal envelope costs you for six months instead of two.
The housing stock makes it worse. The Census Bureau's 2024 American Community Survey puts the median year built for a Des Moines home at 1963, with roughly a quarter of the city's housing units built in 1939 or earlier and nearly half built before 1960. Those houses went up before Iowa had any statewide energy code. Many have two to four inches of settled cellulose or rock wool in the attic, uninsulated rim joists, open balloon-framed wall cavities and dozens of unsealed penetrations into the attic.
Add about 36.5 inches of snow in a normal season (NOAA, same normals) and you get the metro's signature winter problem: ice dams. Warm indoor air leaks into the attic, warms the roof deck, melts snow from below, and the water refreezes at the cold eave. University of Minnesota Extension is blunt about it: "It is primarily heat flowing from the house that causes the nonuniform temperatures of the roof surface leading to ice dams." That means the fix is in the attic floor, not the gutter.
Iowa adopted the 2012 IECC with state amendments as its energy code effective June 1, 2014. It calls for R-49 ceilings, R-20 walls (or R-13 plus R-5 continuous), R-19 or R-15 continuous on basement and crawl space walls, and an air-leakage limit of 4 air changes per hour at 50 pascals for new one- and two-family homes. The code does not apply to remodeling existing houses, so nobody is going to make you meet it. But it is the clearest local benchmark for what a well-insulated Central Iowa house looks like, and it is where we aim when we scope a retrofit.
How it works
It starts with a walk-through, not a quote sheet. We look at the attic, the rim joist, any crawl space or unfinished basement wall, and the places where heat commonly escapes: top plates, chases, recessed lights, the attic hatch, bath fan ducts, the sill and the band joist. If you have ice dams, drafty rooms, frost on the underside of the roof deck or a musty crawl space, we want to see where that is coming from before we talk products.
Then you get a written scope that says what will be sprayed, at what thickness, with which foam type, and why. Open-cell and closed-cell foam do different jobs, and so do fiberglass, cellulose and rigid board; a good scope often mixes them. If a cheaper material does the job in a given spot, the scope says so. You also get a plain explanation of prep (moving stored items, protecting finishes), ventilation during the job, and how long the house needs to air out before you are back in the space.
On install day the crew masks off the work area, sets up ventilation, and sprays in lifts to the specified thickness. Thickness is checked with a depth gauge, not eyeballed. Where the code requires a thermal or ignition barrier over foam in a living space or an attached garage, that is in the scope from the start rather than discovered by an inspector later.
Our approach
Spray foam is a strong material that is easy to oversell. It is the right answer at the rim joist, on crawl space walls, on the underside of a pole barn roof and in a lot of attics. It is not always the right answer for a whole house, and it is never a substitute for finding the actual air leaks. So the scope you get from us will name the leak paths and say what closes them, even when the answer is caulk and a piece of rigid foam rather than a truckload of spray.
We treat combustion safety, moisture and code as part of the job, not afterthoughts. Tightening a house with an atmospherically vented furnace or water heater changes how it drafts; the scope will say what needs to be checked. Foam in a living space needs a thermal barrier; exposed foam at a rim joist has specific limits. We write those into the plan so there are no surprises.
Pricing is by the written scope, and the scope is yours to keep whether or not you hire us. If you want to compare it against another contractor's proposal, we would rather you do that than guess.
The Des Moines metro has an unusual mix: pre-war houses on the east and south sides and in Windsor Heights and Valley Junction; postwar ranches across Urbandale, Beaverdale and the Merle Hay corridor; big tracts of 2000s and 2010s construction in Ankeny, Waukee, Grimes and Bondurant; and thousands of steel-framed and post-frame buildings on acreages in Warren, Dallas and Polk counties. Each one leaks heat differently, and the scope has to match.
A 1920s house needs its attic floor air sealed before insulation goes down, and its rim joist and balloon-framed wall tops closed off. A 2005 two-story usually has decent attic insulation but an uninsulated rim, a leaky bonus room over the garage and a crawl space that was never finished. A pole barn needs closed-cell foam on the steel to stop condensation dripping on equipment. We work all three regularly and the difference shows up in the written scope.
Service area
Des Moines and the surrounding metro: West Des Moines, Ankeny, Urbandale, Johnston, Waukee, Clive, Altoona, Pleasant Hill, Grimes, Norwalk, Indianola, Bondurant, Windsor Heights and Carlisle, plus acreages and farms across Polk, Dallas, Warren and Madison counties. If you are within roughly 25 miles of downtown Des Moines, call and we will confirm.
Questions
It depends on where the heat is leaving. In an open attic with a solid air seal on the floor, blown cellulose or fiberglass is often the better value for the top-up. At the rim joist, on crawl space walls, in cathedral ceilings and on steel buildings, spray foam does something the loose-fill products cannot: it stops air and moisture movement at the same time it insulates. Most of our scopes use both.
Ice dams come from warm air reaching the roof deck. If the foam is used to air seal the attic floor and the attic is then insulated to a proper depth and ventilated, yes, it addresses the cause. Foam sprayed on the roof deck of a vented attic without fixing the floor usually does not. We will tell you which situation you have after looking at the attic.
Foam manufacturers publish re-occupancy guidance for each product, and we follow the manufacturer's guidance for the specific foam used on your job. The scope will state it. Work areas are ventilated during and after spraying, and the crew will tell you when it is safe to re-enter.
Tell us what the house is doing and we will come look at where the heat is going.
Request a free estimate Call (515) 436-4019