Grimes has gone from a farm town on Highway 141 to one of the metro's fastest-growing suburbs. Most of its houses are less than twenty years old and most have a batt where the rim joist foam should be.
Tell us what's happening at the Grimes property and we'll come take a look.
Grimes sits northwest of Des Moines where Iowa Highway 141 crosses into Dallas County, with Beaver Creek running along its south side. The old downtown along Main Street still has its early-1900s and postwar houses, roughly 4 percent of the stock before 1960 per the Census Bureau's 2020-2024 American Community Survey. Everything else is recent: a median year built of 2009 for the city's roughly 6,200 housing units, about 66 percent built since 2000 and about 48 percent since 2010.
Because so much of Grimes was built in the last fifteen years, a lot of it was permitted under Iowa's 2012-based energy code. That means the attics and walls are generally reasonable and, for houses permitted after mid-2014, a blower door test was required. It does not mean the rim joist was foamed, the bonus room floor was insulated, or the basement wall was ever touched.
The most common call from Grimes is a homeowner about to finish a basement in a house that is five to fifteen years old. The right sequence is closed-cell foam on the poured walls and the rim joist first, then framing without a plastic vapor barrier, then drywall. It is a fast job in a clean new basement, and it prevents the damp-fiberglass problem that shows up a few years after the usual method.
The second most common is a cold bonus room over the garage, which is usually an uninsulated or under-insulated floor over the garage ceiling plus leaky knee walls. Both are straightforward to fix from the attic and garage side.
Between Grimes, Dallas Center and Granger there are farmsteads and acreages with pole barns and shops. Closed-cell foam on the steel is how you stop the condensation drip and make a shop usable in January. If you have one, tell us its size and how you heat it and we will scope it along with, or separately from, the house.
Grimes is part of our Central Iowa service area. Free on-site estimates, no obligation.
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