Spray Foam Insulation in Urbandale, IA

Ranch country east of I-35/80

Urbandale developed outward from the Merle Hay Road corridor in the 1950s and 1960s, and the neighborhoods east of the interstate are a textbook postwar stock: single-story ranches, split-levels and split-foyers on block foundations, many with attached garages and a room over them. The Census Bureau's 2020-2024 American Community Survey shows about 17 percent of Urbandale's roughly 18,500 housing units built before 1960 and about 43 percent between 1960 and 1999, with a citywide median year built of 1992.

Those ranches typically have a few inches of blown insulation in a low-pitched attic, can lights added during a kitchen remodel, a bath fan venting into the attic, and a block foundation with an open rim. Split-levels add a crawl space under the raised wing, usually vented, usually with fallen batts.

Newer Urbandale west of the interstate

West of I-35/80 and out toward the Dallas County line, around Living History Farms and the Walnut Creek corridor, the housing is 1990s to 2010s. The attics are deeper but the rim joists are still batts, the basements are poured and bare, and the finished upper floors have knee walls. Roughly 38 percent of the city's housing has been built since 2000.

In both halves of the city the two highest-value jobs are usually the same: air seal and top up the attic, and foam the rim joist. In the split-levels, encapsulating the crawl space is the third.

Low-pitch attics and how we handle them

Many east Urbandale ranches have a 4/12 or lower roof pitch, which leaves little room at the eaves for insulation depth. We use eave baffles and, where the space is too tight to reach R-49 with loose fill, a band of closed-cell foam at the perimeter to get R-value into the few inches available. The scope will show how the eave is handled, because that is where ice dams start on these houses.