Spray Foam Insulation in Ankeny, IA

A city built mostly since 2000

Ankeny sits about ten miles north of downtown Des Moines along I-35 and has been one of Iowa's fastest-growing cities for two decades. The Census Bureau's 2020-2024 American Community Survey shows a median year built of 2006 for its roughly 29,800 housing units, with about 63 percent built since 2000 and about 41 percent since 2010. Prairie Trail, on the former Iowa State University dairy farm site, and the subdivisions spreading toward Polk City and Bondurant account for much of it.

The older core around Uptown Ankeny and the neighborhoods near the DMACC campus date to the postwar decades, with a smaller share of pre-1960 homes, about 8 percent citywide. Those get the same attic-floor and rim joist attention as older houses anywhere in the metro.

Where new Ankeny houses leak

Houses built to the 2009 or 2012 code generation usually have R-38 to R-49 in the open attic and decent wall insulation. What they often lack: closed-cell foam at the rim joist (many have a fiberglass batt stuffed in each bay), a real air seal at the top plates behind the attic insulation, insulation under bonus rooms over the garage, and any thermal break on the basement walls. Two-story plans with a finished upper floor and knee-wall attics leak at the transitions between the flat attic and the sloped ceiling.

Finished basements are common in Ankeny and are a frequent reason we get called: the owner wants to finish the lower level and has read about fiberglass against concrete. Closed-cell foam on the poured walls and the rim before framing is the right order, and it is quick in a clean new basement.

Scheduling an Ankeny assessment

Tell us the approximate age of the house and whether the basement is finished, and we will come look. Newer houses are fast to assess because the attic is open and the basement is usually accessible, and the scope tends to be short and specific.