Air Sealing service menu item with a side of pest control

Our project this week had our customer choosing standard items from our service menu with a side of pest control. The customer’s home was built in the late 70’s and had construction details like a mansard roof and a block foundation.  The attic was leaky and under insulated.  

The basement had a leaky foundation (air was pouring through the block wall foundation), an area where there was no rim joist separating the finished basement space from what we presumed was an inaccessible ventilated crawl space, and of great importance to the customer was a mouse and snake intrusion problem.

The solution to the attic space was pretty straightforward, we had to use energy saving baffles to keep the cellulose insulation from  falling down into the front and rear elevation of the mansard roof structure, air seal all penetrations and interior wall top plates.  We then followed this treatment with blown in cellulose insulation to R60 on the flat section of the mansard roof attic.

In the basement we needed to remove the finished drywall ceiling in the family room to access the rim joist.  This was followed by installation of copper mesh everywhere there was a penetration and covering the top of every core hole in the block foundation.

Where there was a missing rim joist we used our Silverglo foam block to create a surface to adhere the copper mesh to  and to seal the finished portion of the basement from the area that the most snakes and mice were believed to have originated – the crawlspace.

 The Copper Mesh is designed to act as a chain link fence keeping the mice from chewing through the 2 part high density foam that we sprayed in place to not only air seal the rim joist, but also to provide a barrier to snakes and mice.  The complete assembly of Silverglo foam blocks, Copper Mesh and two part foam create an effective barrier that controls air flow, mice migration and snakes pursuing their prey.