Roofmaster Ottawa

RE: O'Reilly Brothers (insulation company) and ROOFMASTER:

Even in this heatwave, the interior temperature of this house is not increasing during the day. Because I do not have A/C -- and I don't even want to run a desktop or pole-mounted electric fan if I can avoid it -- the fact of remaining cooler improves comfort indoors without wasted energy.

In the evening the thermostat now displays the same number (today it was 78F) as I had observed in early morning.

NB: The furnace fan is set NOT to activate (i.e. to bring up cooler air from the basement) unless the temperature goes up over 80F. This is on a thermostat that is programmable but American-made, so the numbers are in 'oldspeak' i.e. not Celsius.

This result bodes well for this insulation being able to prevent heat transfer in the opposite direction during winter. I wanted this insulation badly due to many years of difficulty keeping the upstairs rooms warm, and draftiness during colder months.

Which insulation (the reflective/foam-board put on by Roofmaster, or spray foam applied by O'Reilly) made the most difference is hard to determine and ultimately does not matter much. The important thing is that these two products are working together.

Spray foam went into the crawl space above upstairs ceiling, which is not accessible from indoors and thus best achieved when the shingles were taken off and access facilitated from outside by removing a few boards of the roof decking, which were then put back.

This joint effort by these two companies to cooperate on insulating this house is much appreciated.

Kudos to the foam-spraying man (whose name unfortunately I do not have), as well as to the two 'mountain goats' who placed the foam boards as well as the sheet metal. Foreman Mark Fonseca showed excellent skills and was very responsive to address questions and deal with issues.

One complication that emerged was that this 1950-vintage house isn't really 'square' so the slightly trapezoidal shape of the roof meant having to trim the last metal panel to be applied on a slight diagonal. Mr. Fonseca exercised care to get this straight, and the cut edge crimped down in place.

I also wanted to express appreciation particularly to the Roofmaster estimator Mr. David Garneys, who was unfailingly pleasant and helpful.

He did his utmost to help me choose the most suitable products and also the best colour choice of sheet metal to go with existing siding. He presented a range of insulation options of which I chose the thickest, wanting to get the greatest possible improvement.

Thanks for to all who did their jobs very well. The office personnel of both companies were also helpful and courteous.