Home Builders Use Spray Foam During Construction of New Homes, Stress Long-Term Cost Benefits

As Americans look to cut their greenhouse gas emissions and improve energy efficiency, they are turning to companies that can make retrofits to homes and cut costs.

According to a report from Eco Home Magazine, energy efficiency measures like spray foam insulation application can save homeowners thousands of dollars each year. However, many tools that can help to bring about the cost savings are still comparatively expensive to older home products, which makes them a hard sell for companies like S&A Homes, a construction firm based in Pennsylvania.

S&A Homes vice president of sales Chris Schoonmaker recently spoke at the Housing Leadership Summit in Chicago, where he affirmed that energy efficiency upgrades can save homeowners more than $15,000 over the course of seven years. Still, there are significant upfront costs that go into the measures.

Meritage Homes vice president of environmental affairs C.R. Herro said that the company uses a variety of energy efficient products when it builds homes now. Among these products, he said, are spray foam insulation, high-performance windows and plumbing fixtures. The benefit of the technologies, Herro asserted, is that often they are all easily tied together.

Houses in Meritage's Lyon's Gate community in Arizona were built using the products, and the company said the homes are drawing three times the traffic of other local communities and were closing three times the number of buyers.