Joe in Scarborough

We moved into this 40-year old home last November. This home is heated by electric baseboards and we have twenty of them. Our heating bill was so expensive that we needed to do something to bring it down. After having investigated different options, we have decided that retrofitting with forced air central heating is not a desirable option (as our basement has been fully finished and we don't have the ductwork) nor insulating the perimeter walls from inside of the house (as we cannot accept the mess and fix-up we have to do after drilling hundreds of holes in our drywalls). In fact, we have also called an insulation contractor who uses expansion foam that will require us to take down all the drywalls! So that left us with two options: AirKrete (it doesn't expand) from the outside, or do nothing. We called Mark Connor of Envirotech Insulation. Mark is courteous and professional. He tried his best to answer all my questions and concerns and gave us a very reasonable price. He investigated that our house has thin batts of fiberglass insulation (R8) typical of that time inside our perimeter walls. He would inject AirKrete from the outside (by drilling holes between the mortar joints) of the house. On the day of the installation, his crew of three (not himself) arrived at 7:30am. They were polite and appeared to know their work (hey, what else can I rely on other than those little body languages?), they gained my trust right away. The drilling started at eight and it was so noisy that I decided to leave the house with them and I went out for a long breakfast. They had to skip a few areas that cannot not be reached or insulated (the wall cavity inside our garage is too thin) and at the end, Mark deducted those areas from the invoice accordingly. (I think that this really shows that Mark is honest and professional.) They left our house at 3pm with reasonable cleanup. The holes in the mortar joints (may be 200 of them) were covered with small pieces of foam (the similar type that insulates your water pipes coming out of your water heater) and then covered with color-matched mortar. The smoothing (with finger) of the mortar is not as pretty as I wish but it is acceptable. All of my other concerns have not happened: 1) the drilling has not drilled through any water pipes, electric wire, gas lines or interior wall, 2) the drilling has not damaged the structure of the exterior wall (it is all brick) as it appears. This is very important. It is August so I cannot determine the saving in our heating bills in the winter yet. The house does seem to be cooler (we don't have air-conditioning!) and a little quieter than before (it was already quiet before we put in AirKrete, this house was well-constructed). Next May I will write again to report on our heating bills. For now, I want to thank Mark, Ed, Stu and Charlie for doing a terrific job. Good people are hard to come by these days, I highly recommend Mark and his company. Thank you!