The Comfort Zone

Spray Foam Magazine – Fall 2026 – Josh Lowder is a third-generation foamer who works alongside his father, Sheldon, at Comfort Zone Insulation, LLC in Colorado’s San Luis Valley. Spray foam has been part of Josh’s life for as long as he can remember, but the family’s roots in the industry stretch back more than 45 years to his grandfather, Val Lowder.

Josh credits Grandpa Val with teaching him much of what he knows about the industry today. Val was an innovator long before sophisticated spray rigs became commonplace, building and modifying equipment to meet the family’s needs. Over the years, that ingenuity included everything from homemade foaming machines housed inside a semi with 10-set bulk tanks to custom-built lifts, rigs, gun parts, and chambers.

Val and his wife, Sharon, raised seven children, the oldest being Josh’s father, Sheldon. Sheldon began accompanying his father to job sites when he was just eight years old, whenever he wasn’t in school. “By 10 years old, my dad was applying material; an adult helper would take him to a job, set him up, and he would apply the material,” explains Josh.

The family’s earliest spray foam setup was a far cry from today’s modern rigs. “When my family first started in the SPF industry, they had a Gusmer FF air-drive machine and a D-gun in the back of a ’56 Chevy step side pickup,” explains Josh. “From there, this grew into a full-time operation, installing in all types of structures.”

As the business expanded, so did the equipment. The family progressed to an open 24-foot flatbed gooseneck trailer. When rain and dirt became a problem for the exposed foam barrels, they built a canvas tent over the trailer to keep everything dry. Eventually, the canvas was replaced with solid sides, and the rig was upgraded with a Gusmer H-20 and GX-7 guns.

After that rig caught fire, the family replaced it with another 24-foot dually enclosed gooseneck equipped with a Gusmer H-20/35. By then, they had developed a proven setup and were operating as Lowder Roofing. As the business continued to grow, they purchased a 48-foot enclosed step-deck semi-trailer and outfitted it with a homemade machine and day tanks capable of holding 11 sets of material and spraying a set of foam out in less than 30 minutes!  

By 1990, armed with one mobile rig and plenty of determination, the family was installing foam across 12 states at a rate of approximately 600 sets per year. As the operation grew, Val’s sons Sheldon, Shane, Dan, and BJ, along with grandsons Josh and Travis, all became installers. Over time, family members branched out into different areas and built businesses of their own.

By 2025, the family’s spray foam legacy had reached Russia, Mexico, and 25 U.S. states, with an average annual output of approximately 1,400 sets of foam and 500 barrels of coating.

Val sprayed his final set of foam and retired in 2025, but the standards and ingenuity he established continue at Sheldon’s Comfort Zone Insulation. All of Sheldon’s children have helped with the business through the years, and today Josh is carrying that tradition forward.

“As a family, we now run nine rigs, all upgraded to Grandpa Val’s standards. We build our own spray guns and modify everything to make foam life fun and productive,” says Josh. Josh learned the trade from both his father and grandfather, and his own jobsite memories go back to when he was only five years old. By eight, he was even driving the family’s semi a few miles down the road from one job to the next. “One of my earliest memories of working with Grandpa was when he pulled one of my baby teeth out in the rig with a pair of dirty pliers, then told me to get back to work or the Tooth Fairy would keep my dollar,” Josh laughs.

After graduating from high school, Josh briefly started down a different path, pursuing medicine, a profession common on the other side of his family. It didn’t take that long, however, for him to realize how much he missed spray foam and that he wanted to return to the family business.

At 20, Josh built his first personal foaming rig, equipped with a 20/35 and day tanks. “Grandpa and I built it together, and that’s where I became intimate with the machinery,” says Josh. “Grandpa took me to spray my first full job, a new house build. Until then, it’d been just short bursts here and there or a foundation. The following year, we rebuilt another rig together, and a few years after that, in 2015, the machine that Val and Dad put in the semi back in the ’90s came out of retirement to become my next and current rig, a 24-foot gooseneck.”

Josh has now been working with his father for 16 years and has taken over the company’s day-to-day operations. He is also quick to recognize the important role his grandmother Sharon played in the family business. She proudly watched her sons and, later, her grandsons spray while running quality control from the ground. “When she passed away last summer, Grandpa Val finally hung up the gun and retired his machinery to the family,” says Josh. “He’s still playing with his prototype gun, and maybe someday you’ll see it on the market.”

Through the years, Josh and the Comfort Zone crew have tackled plenty of memorable projects, each presenting its own challenges. One of the wildest involved a new customer whose home was being threatened by a shifting mountainside.

“One of the wildest jobs I’ve had to do was for a new customer to build a breaker wall behind a house where the mountain was sluffing away and caving the walls of the house in,” recalls Josh. “They excavated a five-foot-wide gap by over six feet tall, the full length of the house, and I had to fill it completely with foam using eight sets of NCFI Strata-Fil. After being able to solve their crisis, we gained a long-time contract that has had us back multiple times for more work.”

For Josh, however, the family’s spray foam story is about more than rigs, sets, and jobsites. It is a legacy that began with his grandfather, passed to his father, and has now reached him. Looking ahead, Josh hopes to leave his own children something they can be proud of—and perhaps see one of them step into the industry as the fourth generation of the Lowder family’s spray foam legacy.