Imagine venturing up to your attic for the first time as a kid, or even your basement (we’ll let your imagination run wild for this one). It’s either hotter than sin or colder than outer space. You see that pink or yellow fuzzy stuff attached to the wooden boards, probably falling off, and of course, you touch it because it looks like cotton candy. Then miraculously, you start itching. It’s probably standard fiberglass insulation that mom and dad told you never to touch just for that reason, and probably because they knew it would fall off.

Fast-forward about 20 years (or to your present age) and you’re building a Jeff Click Home! Take out that image of itchy, semi-worthless insulation and let us introduce you to what we use. It’s new, puffy, brain-matter-looking, and so super sci-fi you need a space suit to install it: ICYNENE Expanding Foam Insulation. Or, incredibly efficient “spray foam” that is in fact implanted with a mysterious gun sent to us direct from the Vulcans.

Populate. Propagate. Insulate.

Do our homes actually posses this material installed by aliens? Kinda. But we’re going to tell you why and how, as mere humans, we standardly use Icynene Expanding Foam insulation in the exterior walls of every energy efficient home we build.

It does matter.

Icynene Insulation, pre-shaving.

Inside the membrane.

Pre-shaven exterior walls.

When applied, the stuff that eerily looks like Mountain Dew Icy Drinks (which is in NO way related to Jeff’s favorite drink) is sprayed in a thin, icy-like layer, which expands exponentially within 30-60 seconds after it’s sprayed. It’s later shaved flush with the 24 studs, completely filling the wall cavities.

Icynene Expanding Foam insulation being sprayed into the wall cavity.

The expanding properties are key because it allows the material to expand into crevices and cavities that other traditional insulations could never reach. This gives the wall, and thus the home, a superior performance in air-tightness over traditional insulation.

The alien injector…of the insulation.

The foam expands 30-60 seconds after “landing.”

We got the scoop directly from Bart Bartholomew, the head honcho at Builders Insulation who supplies and installs our Icynene and we’re going to let you in on some other facts that were discussed:

Jeff Click Homes spends about 2.25 times more for Icynene than typical insulations other builders use. This equates to about $2500 more spent per home just on the insulation portion of our energy efficiency performance practices.

There’s an average 5-year return on investment for the homeowner on this expense in utility savings. A $2500 increase in the financing of a home equates to about $20/mo on a typical mortgage payment. However, the average savings in utility costs due to this insulation is $80/mo. This is a $60 net pick-up per month for the homeowner!  It’s like turning a $20 bill into 3 $20 bills every month. You can’t do that consistently in any casino.

Icynene is among the best residential insulations.

Ours is installed by Builders Insulation.

Put on your space suit and call up Capt. Spock, and go learn some more about Icynene Expanding Foam Insulation, standard in every new home by Jeff Click Homes.

A few Fridays a month, we post a new WTFF, or “What the Feature?! Friday” blurb scoping in on special elements of our homes that make us one unique thumbprint. Some are standard features, some are options, but all have a cool story.