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Apr. 30

Progressive Foam Celebrates 20 Year Anniversary

Category: Introduction
By: Lauren Higl

 

Patrick Culpepper, Co-Founder & President of Progressive Foam

Beach City, Ohio- Progressive Foam Technologies, Inc. today announced it is celebrating its 20th anniversary as an innovative manufacturer of siding insulation products. Progressive Foam was founded in April of 1992 and has grown from a handful of people to more than 100 employees with $22 million in annual sales. Located in Beach City, Ohio, the company is dedicated to providing innovative siding insulation systems to make homes comfortable and energy-efficient.

Co-founder and President Patrick Culpepper began Progressive Foam by borrowing $200,000 from two friends on a handshake. The first facility was a small pole building located just south of New Philadelphia, Ohio, where they manufactured insulation for use behind vinyl siding. Twenty years later, Progressive Foam now operates out of an 111,000 square foot facility on 10 acres in Beach City, Ohio, and has its products installed on over 650,000 homes in the United States and Canada. The company recently expanded its product offerings to include siding insulation for use behind any type of siding material, including fiber cement, composite wood, steel, brick and cultured stone.

Culpepper attributes the lasting success of Progressive Foam to the dedication of its employees. “It’s all about the people you put in the building. If you employ good people, and provide the environment and tools that they need, good things will happen.” This combination has proved successful for Progressive Foam, made evident by the fact that the majority of their employees have been with the company for five years or more.

Culpepper adds that continual improvement is another cornerstone for Progressive Foam. “As a company committed to product innovation, we are proud to say that we currently hold 13 U.S. and Canadian patents, five of which have issued in the last 12 months, and have six patents pending for future products.” Some of these future products are currently being manufactured at their Beach City facility for release later this year.

About Progressive Foam
Progressive Foam Technologies, Inc., headquartered in Beach City, Ohio, is a siding insulation company dedicated to providing innovative products that make homes comfortable and energy efficient. They manufacture siding insulation from expanded polystyrene foam (EPS), which serves as a thermal bridge reducer while increasing energy efficiency, reducing air infiltration and providing moisture management. For more information, visit www.progressivefoam.com.

 

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Apr. 11

One Mistake You Should Never Make When You Buy New Siding

Category: Energy Saving Siding, Performance
By: Lauren Higl

Buying new siding for your home, whether you are remodeling or building, is a big decision that requires you to make a number of choices. For instance, you will have to decide what contractor to choose, what siding product is right for your home, what color you want it to be, what the trim will look like, and more. As you walk through all of your options, one mistake you should never make is to pass up this great opportunity to add insulation to the outside walls of your home.

It will never be easier or more affordable to insulate the exterior of your home than when you have new siding installed. While you’re making the investment in your home, why  not invest a little more to lower your utility bills every month for as long as the siding is on your home? You may have some questions about why you should  add siding insulation to  your new siding. Below are some answers to a few of those questions:

Q: Why do I need insulation on the outside of my home?

Before Exterior Insulation

A: Exterior insulation helps to break your home’s thermal bridge, an energy leak in the walls that you might not even know is there. Check out this house as an example. Thermal imaging helps reveal where heat is escaping from this house (yellow, orange and red indicates warmth while blue and green is cooler). As you can see, the yellow lines are revealing this hidden energy leak. Heat from inside the home is bypassing the pink insulation in the wall cavities and escaping to the cool outdoors across the wooden studs and other framing members in the wall. This is what building scientists call thermal bridging.

Q: How dramatic is the heat loss due to thermal bridging?

A: The studs and wooden framing members that causes thermal bridging account for 25% of your wall surface. This means that if you took all of the studs in your home and pushed them together, it would be like having one entire wall of your home with no insulation at all!

Q: If I break the thermal bridge with exterior insulation, how much will it reduce my energy bills?

After Exterior Insulation

A: As you can see from this after picture, the home from before has now broken the thermal bridge with exterior insulation. The big energy leaks are eliminated, which helps to reduce the homeowner’s utility bills. Every home is different, which makes it hard to estimate how much you will save on your utility bills every month by installing exterior insulation under your new siding. The amount you save will vary based on your location, your home and the products you choose. We suggest having a certified energy rater perform an energy evaluation on your home to give you an accurate representation of how much you can expect to save.

Q: Are there additional benefits of adding insulation, beyond energy savings?

A: There are plenty of other benefits to adding exterior insulation under your new siding. Rigid siding insulation will help to level out the wall surface, enhancing the appearance of your new siding. Some siding insulation products provide protection against moisture damage and pest infestation. In addition, there are other siding insulation products contoured to fit the unique profile of the siding you choose. This helps to provide more support to the siding panel, allowing for wider, flatter profiles in some cases as well as enhanced durability.

When you’re ready to have new siding installed on your home, don’t miss the opportunity to easily add insulation to the exterior of your home. You will enhance the performance and energy efficiency of your siding for now and years to come!

 

Posted in Energy Saving Siding, Performance | 1 Comment
Mar. 28

Study Shows Insulated Vinyl Siding Out Performs Other Exterior Cladding In Impact on Health & the Environment

Category: Environmental Responsibility, Lifestyle Impact
By: Lauren Higl

Vinyl siding is currently the number one exterior cladding across the United States and Canada, with many people choosing it for their homes due to its affordability, design versatility, durability and low maintenance. But have you ever wondered how vinyl siding compares to other siding options when it comes to it’s impact on health and the environment?

In the past, it was difficult for homeowners to determine what effects different products had on the environment or the health of their families. Luckily, today there are many forms of analysis that can determine the true impacts that products have. One of these tests is a Life Cycle Assessment, or LCA. An LCA identifies the impacts of a product over its lifespan, including extraction and processing of raw materials, manufacturing, transportation & distribution, use, reuse, maintenance, recycling and final disposal.

We commissioned Sustainable Solutions Corporation to run an LCA on insulated vinyl siding. Two charts from that LCA (shown below) display the low overall environmental impact of vinyl siding in comparison to other siding options, and its low  potential of contribution to cancer and other health impacts. To develop these charts, over 200 chemical were assessed. These health impacts are general, based on emissions from the various life cycle stages. As you can see, vinyl siding ranks very closely with natural cedar siding and out performs other options like brick and stucco.

Overall Environmental Impact

For measuring the potential contribution to cancer, the Toxic Equivalency Potential for each chemical is determined and is displayed in terms of benzene equivalents.

 

For the full results of the LCA, click here. Below are some additional environmental & health facts from the Vinyl Siding Institute (VSI) further proves the findings of this LCA:

  • “Even though the production of vinyl siding and other vinyl products has grown considerably during the past 20 years, the level of dioxin released to the environment has decreased by nearly 90 percent over the same time period.
  • “Vinyl siding production is responsible for the emission of significantly lower levels of toxic chemicals, including mercury and silver, than other cladding options. In addition, per the ASTM D3679 standard, vinyl siding certified through the VSI Vinyl Siding Product Certification Program must be free of lead.”
All of these graphs and tables were produced using BEES Online and additional data can be obtained by going to http://ws680.nist.gov/Bees/.
 

Posted in Environmental Responsibility, Lifestyle Impact | 1 Comment
Feb. 29

Is Your Home Up to Modern Energy-Efficiency Standards?

Category: Energy Saving Siding, Performance
By: Lauren Higl


Building science has come a long way in recent years. We are learning more every day about how to make homes more energy-efficient while still keeping them affordable. This is even more important to homeowners today than it was in the past because the cost to heat, cool and run a home continues to increase. Many homeowners are at the mercy of factors beyond their control, such as the price of oil per barrel or the cost of electricity. But there are some things that can be controlled, such as reducing our own consumption, which in turn can help reduce energy bills.

You may already know that your home needs some energy-efficient upgrades, or you may think that you have a pretty efficient home already. Either way, it is important to know how your home stacks up to the modern energy-efficiency standards set by the best and brightest in the building science community. One way to do this is to check out the 2012 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) and see how your home compares.

The IECC serves as a major regulatory tool for energy-efficient construction and helps guide builders to construct residential and commercial structures that effectively conserve energy. A new code is published every three years, with the most recent code published in January 2012. If you want to compare the energy-efficiency of your existing home to that of new homes being built to code today, the 2012 IECC is a great reference tool.

How does the 2012 IECC say that homes should be built today,
and how does your home compare?

If you didn’t build your own home, you might not know the exact way that it was constructed or how that measures up to the 2012 IECC. To give you a general reference point, we’ve outlined the typical construction methods used for two average homes in climate zone 5, built in 1964 and 2010.

As you can see, even an average home built as recently as 2010 is already lacking the proper insulation values to stand up to modern standards. Depending on where and when your home was built and what enhancements have been made, your results could be better or worse than the numbers listed here.

Regardless of how your home compares to the 2012 IECC, you can rest assured that future versions of the building codes are only going to keep pushing for greater energy efficiency. This can be an important consideration to keep in mind when making upgrades or remodeling decisions for your home. Many products available today offer additional energy efficiency above what traditional products did, so be sure to explore all your options to ensure you are making the most informed decision.

 

For more information on the characteristics of the modeled1964 and 2010 homes listed above, click here.
Posted in Energy Saving Siding, Performance | 3 Comments
Feb. 15

Study Shows Insulated Siding Reduces Air Infiltration

Category: Energy Saving Siding, Performance
By: Tim Holt

A recent study conducted by Newport Ventures shows that installing new insulated vinyl siding and a weather resistive barrier on existing homes reduces air infiltration by 12% on average. Reduced air infiltration can contribute to increasing a residential structure’s energy efficiency.

While the insulating properties of insulated vinyl siding are becoming increasingly recognized in new construction, less is known about the effect the product can have when used in retrofit situations. To learn more about the performance benefits of insulated vinyl siding in residential remodeling, the Vinyl Siding Institute commissioned Newport Ventures, a research firm from Schenectady, NY, to conduct a study on four different homes in climate zones 4 & 5.

The four chosen homes, located in Colorado, Indiana, Maryland and New York had to meet a myriad of requirements in order to provide an accurate representation of air infiltration and energy efficiency rates.  Some of the home specifications are listed in the cart below:

For each home, three air tightness tests were performed: the 1st was done before the remodel began, the 2nd after the siding had been removed and the weather resistive barrier was installed, and the 3rd after the insulated vinyl siding was installed.

The results of the third air infiltration test showed an average of 12% air tightness improvement across all four homes. Both the weather resistive barrier and the insulated vinyl siding improved the air tightness of the home.

Newport Ventures is still evaluating the impact that insulated vinyl siding has on heating energy use. A final report will be released pending the collection of two years of utility data after insulated vinyl siding was installed.

Click here to view the full interim report.

Posted in Energy Saving Siding, Performance | 3 Comments
Feb. 2

How Much Does Siding Insulation Cost?

Category: Financial Impact
By: Lauren Higl

When people are considering making improvements to their home, one of the most important questions they ask is “How much will it cost?” This also tends to be one of the most difficult questions to answer, primarily because each home is unique and every homeowner’s preferences are different.

When it comes to siding insulation, there are many factors that can influence how much it will cost, including but not limited to:

  • where you live (will influence shipping and availability)
  • the design of your home
  • the specific product or trim details you choose
  • the contractor that will be installing the product
  • the time frame you want the job completed in, etc.

Keeping all these variables in mind, we recommend that you have a qualified contractor come out to your home to provide accurate pricing for the project you’re thinking of starting. He or she will take accurate measurements of your home, assess your unique situation and generate an accurate price based on your needs. (If you would like to be contacted by a qualified contractor for a quote, please enter your information here or call Progressive Foam at 330-756-3351.)

However, we understand that it may be important to have a ballpark idea of job cost before a contractor comes to your home. That’s why we refer to Remodeling Magazine’s annual Cost vs. Value report to provide one reference point for price. The report shows that the additional cost of installing new foam backed vinyl siding (vinyl siding with siding insulation laminated to the back during the manufacturing process) is approximately $2,545 more than traditional vinyl siding, or adds about 22% additional cost.

Because siding insulation is an energy saving product that will reduce your utility bills as long as it is on your home, you may be interested in seeing how much money you can expect to save with the product. We recommend that you have a certified Energy Rater perform an energy audit on your home before your siding insulation is installed with new siding to give you a more accurate idea of your estimated energy savings.

In addition, your new siding insulation could also qualify for a tax credit or rebate due to its energy saving properties. These incentives are sometimes provided by the federal, state and local government, and even the utility companies themselves! We encourage you to visit www.dsireusa.org to find out more informationa bout the potential savings in your state!

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Jan. 18

Custom Home Builder Uses Insulated Vinyl Siding for Model Homes

Category: Siding Appearance
By: Lauren Higl

    

Paul Schumacher

We sat down with Paul Schumacher of Schumacher Homes to learn why the largest home builder in the country chose to feature insulated vinyl siding on their model homes.
____________________________________________________ 

“Hi, I’m Paul Schumacher of Schumacher Homes. Schumacher Homes is the largest custom home builder in the country. Unlike typical home builders, all of our model homes are located in highly visible retail locations. We like to think of it as a Parade of Homes 365 days a year.

It’s essential for us to show the latest and greatest in our building products and materials to our customers who are coming through on a daily basis. Let’s face it, people are very visual, so it’s very difficult to look at a small product chip and envision what it’s going to look like on their home. Seeing it in a real life setting on the actual home, people can get a feel if that’s the look and the style of the material that they want on their home.

When it comes to siding in particular, a lot of people ask about cement siding because they like the look of it, however they don’t like the drawback of the maintenance part of it. That’s where we sit down and educate people on all their options. They can go with a vinyl siding product that has the same look of the cement siding but also has the added benefit of completely maintenance free as well as the energy efficiency of the foam-backed product, so then you get the best of both worlds. You get the look and the feel and the energy efficiency with no maintenance.”

For more info about insulated vinyl siding, click here.

More about Schumacher Homes: Schumacher Homes is the largest and one of the most decorated custom home builders in the country. Over the years, Schumacher Homes has taken the promise of an affordable, innovative, fully customized home and made it a reality for more than 8,000 families across the country. And, no two of those homes is alike. Each reflects the personal design choices and dreams of its owners. See more at http://www.schumacherhomes.com/aboutus.aspx?mn=nav

Posted in Siding Appearance | 1 Comment
Jan. 4

What is Siding Insulation?

Category: Introduction
By: Lauren Higl

     
If you’re interested in learning about different methods of insulating homes or other structures, then siding insulation is a phrase you definitely need to be familiar with. It can completely change the way you look at insulation; not only does it provide energy efficiency, but it can even improve the performance of the siding and the whole wall system!

Let’s start by identifying the basic problem that siding insulation solves. When most people think of home insulation, they picture pink, fluffy fiberglass insulation that goes in between the wall studs and other framing members. This type of insulation is great for adding R-value to the wall and making your home more energy-efficient, but there is one big flaw with this method of insulating a home; by putting batt insulation between the studs, you do not insulate over top of the studs themselves. This leaves a major “thermal bridge” for energy to leak across. In the winter, heat from the warm inside of the home escapes to the cooler outdoors; in the summer, warm air from the outside comes across the studs, warming the cooler interior of your home.

So how do you break this thermal bridge and stop the energy loss? You guessed it… siding insulation. Siding insulation is rigid foam insulation that is contoured to fit the shape of the siding panel it is paired with. It can be installed behind the siding on the job site or laminated to some siding panels during the manufacturing process. Because the siding insulation is installed on the outside of the home, it completely covers up the wall studs and other framing members, breaking the thermal bridge. Click here to watch a short video clip about how siding insulation breaks the thermal bridge.

Now that you know what siding insulation is, you may have asked yourself one of the following questions. Although the answer to both could be “yes”, here’s why siding insulation is the better choice:

Insulating from the inside out can be an expensive & messy process

1.) Can I insulate over the studs from the inside out instead?

Yes, you can insulate the studs from the outside in. However, to get to the studs in a remodeling situation, you may have to remove drywall, take down cabinets, pull back carpet and more, then replace them after the insulation is installed! This can be a long, messy process that can also cause you to lose square footage on the interior of the home. By using siding insulation on the outside, you can beautify the home with new siding while increasing its energy efficiency at the same time.


2.)    If I decide to insulate from the outside in, can I use something other than siding insulation?

If you decide to insulate on the exterior, there are other flat foam product options to insulate under new siding. However, by using contoured siding insulation you reap extra benefits. Depending on the type of siding that siding insulation is paired with, benefits can include:

  • Increased impact resistance (more)
  • Enhanced moisture management, protecting your home from mold (more)
  • Protects against pests, such as termites (more)
  • Perfectly installed panels every time for an enhanced appearance, and more!

To learn about the benefits of adding siding insulation to a specific siding type, click here:
VINYL SIDING – FIBER CEMENT SIDING – COMPOSITE WOOD – STEEL – OTHER

Posted in Introduction | 1 Comment
Dec. 21

Happy Holidays & Our Favorite Posts of 2011

Category: Uncategorized
By: Lauren Higl

    
As the year draws to a close, we would like to take a moment to wish all of you a happy holiday season and thank you for your continued readership! It’s hard to believe the siding insulation blog has been live for 10 months already. We’ve had a lot of fun posting our topics and reading your comments. If you’re new to the blog, here are a few of the most popular posts from 2011: Continue reading →

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Dec. 7

Decorate Your Home with this Fabric Wreath!

Category: Uncategorized
By: Matt and Shari

Click to play video

Believe it or not, many of the projects that we make for shows or specials don’t make it into the show at all.  Well, my “any season” wreath was one of those projects!  It’s very easy to make and depending on your choice of fabrics, could be appropriate for any season!  This wreath can be used indoors or outdoors if you have an awning or another covering over the place it is being hung. My next venture, soft pastels for spring!

Materials List:

  • Wire wreath frame: size of your choosing, mine were 18” frames
  • 1 yard each of at least four different, coordinating flannel fabrics
  • ½ yard each of at least two different coordinating felt colors

Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments