I’m no expert of foam but because of Clark I’m quickly becoming interested. I work in the architectural field and we use this foam product for insulating houses called BioBase. They have two types of foams that I know of, 0.5 lbs. (BioBase 501) & the 2.0 lbs. (BioBase 1702). It’s a soy based polyurethane foam. I was just curious if this can be a new alternative in the new foam industry.
It’d be interesting to hear how this compares with other Poly foams in VOC’s, compression strength, etc.
Greg may know more about this. Maybe he’ll chime in.
EJ
polyurethane foam is a two part system: the polyol side and the isocyanate side (ie TDI). The polyol side can be derived from a number of different natural product feedstocks, but it is the isocyanate side that is the nasty actor. Bottom line is any polyurethane foam can have a “green” side, but they will still have to crosslink that with something that is considerably less friendly.
A long while back i asked if a board could be made te way they mke stressed skin insulation panels. That is expanding foam injected between two pieces of plywood held an exact distance apart under pressure.
I could see a process where you had a bottom skin with rails attached on a rocker table, spray in some foam, pop on a pre formed top skin, and then put it under just enough vacuum to prevent the foam from distorting your pre shaped top skin.
Hi EJ, This soy foam emits no VOC’s.
I built my tiny little cabin out of stress skin panels. The panels are 6 inch thick EPS foam with oriented-strand-board on both sides. Construction was fun and the insulation is so fine that a light bulb keeps it a little warm. I like the idea of a foam house with cedar on the outside and sheetrock on the inside. The osprey live in their grand fir tree (we dont have douglas fir for some reason) in my yard and their house is made out of sticks and plastic bags – they don’t seem to want foam although there is some on the beach, but they pick and choose between other debris especially picking out the big plastic mesh bags that shellfish and onions are kept in. The raccoons don’t seem to use foam either, but they did haul a stuffed animal into their den. But some little creatures seem to like foam as much as we all do. A swarm of yellowjackets has done well in a leftover block. And I’d especially like to mention the tremendous community of carpenter ants that now share my stress skin walls.