Spray Foam Insulation in Pleasant Hill, IA

Terrain first

Pleasant Hill lies southeast of Des Moines along Iowa Highway 163, on rolling ground cut by Four Mile Creek and dotted with lakes like Copper Creek. That topography produces walkout and daylight basements on a large share of lots, which is the single most important thing about insulating a Pleasant Hill house: the basement has one or two framed walls above grade and the rest in concrete, and the rim joist steps up and down with the grade.

The housing is mostly recent. The Census Bureau's 2020-2024 American Community Survey shows a median year built of 2002 for the city's roughly 4,600 housing units, with about 55 percent built since 2000 and about 37 percent between 1960 and 1999. The older homes, about 7 percent before 1960, cluster near the original town along Pleasant Hill Boulevard.

Insulating a walkout basement correctly

The framed above-grade portion needs to be insulated as an exterior wall, with attention to the transition where the framed wall meets the top of the concrete. The below-grade concrete needs closed-cell foam against it before any framing goes in. The rim joist, which is often exposed on the downhill side and buried on the uphill side, gets foamed continuously. Doing all three in one visit before the basement is finished is the efficient sequence, and it is a common call in Pleasant Hill because so many of these basements are being finished by second or third owners.

Attics over complicated rooflines

Many 2000s two-story plans here have multiple roof planes, dormers and a bonus room over the garage. Each transition between a flat attic and a sloped ceiling is a place where insulation thins out and air leaks concentrate, and each one is a candidate ice dam location. Our attic scope maps those transitions and states how each is sealed and insulated, rather than treating the attic as one open space.