Spray Foam Insulation in Fort Worth, TX

Fort Worth covers nearly 350 square miles. It is the Tarrant County seat, and its city limits reach into Denton, Johnson, Parker and Wise counties. The housing is just as spread out in age. Two miles south of downtown, Fairmount filled in with wood-frame bungalows between 1890 and 1938. On the far north side and the west edge, new subdivisions are still being framed. Nearly half of Fort Worth’s homes were built in 2000 or later, and about one in five went up before 1960. A 1915 bungalow and a 2020 two-story need different things from insulation, so we start by looking at what you actually have.

Homes in Fort Worth

Since the 1970s, most Fort Worth houses have been built on a slab, with the furnace or air handler and the ductwork up in the attic. That covers everything from a 1980s ranch to a two-story finished last year near Alliance. In July the attic over those ducts can top 130°F, and the cooled air loses ground the whole way to your vents.

For these homes we usually recommend open cell foam sprayed about 5.5 inches thick on the underside of the roof deck, which comes to roughly R-20. The attic becomes part of the conditioned house, and the ducts and equipment sit in air close to room temperature instead of attic heat. Where foam stays exposed in the attic, it may need an ignition barrier coating. Our attic spray foam page walks through the job step by step.

One thing gets checked before any foam goes up. A gas furnace or gas water heater in the attic needs combustion air, and sealing the attic changes where that air comes from. We look at the equipment during the measure and plan around it.

If you are building on the far north side or in Walsh, the 7,200-acre development west of downtown that straddles Parker and Tarrant counties, foam goes into the exterior walls and the roof deck after the rough-ins and before drywall. The new construction page covers timing with your builder.

Older homes in Fairmount, Arlington Heights and Ryan Place

Fort Worth’s central neighborhoods are a different job. Fairmount was built out between 1890 and 1938, mostly from 1905 to 1920, and its National Register survey counted more than 1,000 historic buildings, with the wood-frame bungalow as the most common house. Ryan Place was platted in 1911. Arlington Heights, on the west side between Camp Bowie Boulevard and I-30, boomed in the 1920s.

Houses of that age typically sit on pier-and-beam foundations, so there is open air under the floor. Cold air moves through the crawl space in winter and humid air in summer, and you feel both through the floorboards. Closed cell foam sprayed on the underside of the subfloor and along the rim joists seals and insulates the floor from below. At about 1.5 inches or more it also acts as a vapor retarder. Our crawl space page has the details.

The attics in these houses can hold decades of old loose-fill, and in some of them rodents have moved in. If yours does, we can vacuum it out before spraying the roof deck, so the dust and droppings leave the house instead of being sealed in with you. See insulation removal.

Neighborhoods and ZIP codes we cover

We work across Fort Worth, including Fairmount and the Near Southside (76104), Ryan Place (76110), Arlington Heights (76107), Wedgwood (76133), Summerfields (76137), the Alliance area (76177 and 76244) and Walsh (76008). That includes the parts of the city that sit in Denton, Johnson, Parker and Wise counties.

Fort Worth spray foam questions

Our two-story on the far north side has hot upstairs bedrooms. Will attic foam help?

It often does. Upstairs rooms sit right under the attic, and the ducts that feed them run through it, sometimes for a long way. With open cell on the roof deck, those ducts sit inside conditioned space instead of a 130°F attic, so the air coming out of the upstairs vents is closer to the temperature it had when it left the unit. If one room still lags afterward, the duct run may need balancing, and we will tell you so.

My metal shop drips water on spring mornings. What stops it?

The drip is condensation. Overnight the steel cools, and when warm, humid air reaches it in the morning, water forms on the underside of the panels. Closed cell foam sprayed directly onto the steel keeps that air off the metal. At about 1.5 inches it works as a vapor retarder and stiffens the panels, and we usually recommend 2 to 3 inches, which gives about R-13 to R-20. See metal building insulation.

Do you work in the parts of Fort Worth outside Tarrant County?

Yes. Fort Worth reaches into Denton, Johnson, Parker and Wise counties, and we cover all of it, from Walsh on the west edge to the newest subdivisions on the far north side. The process is the same everywhere: a free on-site measure, then a written quote, usually within 24 hours.

Can you insulate the walls of a 1920s bungalow without tearing out the plaster?

Spray foam goes into open framing, so we do not spray into finished plaster walls. In an older Fort Worth house we focus on the parts we can reach: the underside of the roof deck, the floor from the crawl space and the rim joists. If you are opening walls during a remodel, that is the time to foam them, and the foam then gets covered with drywall.