Demilec Home Energy Audit Nationwide

Demilec Home Energy Audit in Chicago: What to Know First

We provide independent Demilec home energy audits in Chicago, typically completed in two to three hours with the full written report in your hands before we leave the driveway. A home energy audit on a home with Demilec spray foam insulation runs $299 to $549 depending on square footage and whether we’re testing duct leakage as part of the scope. That price includes a blower-door test, thermal imaging, and a documented record of every reading and photo we take. This page is for homeowners in Chicago who have Demilec insulation, suspect it’s not performing, and want evidence rather than a sales pitch. Call (218) 261-7714 and a live person answers, 24/7.

Call (218) 261-7714

How Demilec Products Fail, and How We Find It

Demilec makes closed-cell and open-cell spray foam under a handful of lines: Sealection 500, Heatlok HFO, Polar Foam, and the Agribalance series. Each has its own Chicago-specific failure profile, and our audits are built around identifying which one applies to your house. Here’s what we actually find when we test Demilec foam in the field:

• Sealection 500 shrinkage at rim joists. This open-cell foam is common in Chicago basements and crawl spaces, and we routinely find it pulling away from rim joists three to five years after install. The gap looks like a hairline crack at the top edge, but the blower-door test shows the real story: the air leakage at that single junction often accounts for 15 to 20 percent of the home’s total CFM50. The fix is specific: we map the gaps with thermal imaging, refill with compatible open-cell foam, and re-test before we call it done. Painting over it does nothing.
• Heatlok HFO overspray, not under-spray. Most homeowners assume thin foam is the problem. With Heatlok HFO, a 2-lb closed-cell foam, the bigger issue we see in Chicago is depth consistency. Where the installer sprayed too thick in one pass, the foam has internal voids, or “corn rows,” that read as normal on the surface but test as air channels underneath. Our audit includes pinhole density checks in suspect zones and thermal imaging that catches the temperature inversion a void creates, especially in the band joist zone where Chicago homes lose heat fastest in January.
• Polar Foam and the attic hatch border. Demilec’s Polar Foam line is rated for exposed attic application, but we inspect the perimeter seals around attic hatches and knee-wall doors every single time. In a surprising number of homes, the foam itself is fine and the hatch border was never air-sealed. On a 2,400-square-foot Chicago two-flat, an unsealed attic hatch with a 1/8-inch gap will pass 60 to 80 CFM50 on its own. We seal the hatch frame before we do anything else in the attic.
• Agribalance and the curing calendar. This bio-based closed-cell line is less common in Chicago, but when it shows up, we check the install date against the temperature record. Agribalance has a narrower substrate temperature window than most Demilec lines. If it was sprayed below 40°F substrate temp, the foam can form a friable surface that sheds dust and fails adhesion. The tell is visible: a chalky texture at the spray boundary. Our report flags it, documents it with photos, and gives you the ACH50 number that says whether it’s still performing.
• Off-ratio foam that never cured right. This is a Demilec install issue, not a Demilec product flaw. When the A-side and B-side pumps drift off ratio, the foam can stay soft, smell odd for weeks, or never reach its rated R-value. A home energy audit catches it by correlating the thermal imaging anomalies with the blower-door reading. If the foam is soft, we document it and recommend removal, not encapsulation. You can’t air-seal over uncured foam and call it fixed.

Our Demilec Home Energy Audit Process

Every Demilec audit we run in Chicago follows the same sequence, and you get the documentation at each stage. Here’s what a typical job looks like from your side:

1. 1
   The call and the scope. You tell us the square footage, the year of the Demilec install if you know it, and what you’re seeing - drafty rooms, high heating bills, cold walls. We give you a written price for the audit before anything is booked. No work starts without it. That’s Haven Standard Clause 1.
2. 2
   The blower-door test first. We set up a calibrated fan in an exterior door and depressurize the house to 50 pascals. The reading, in CFM50 and ACH50, tells us how leaky the house is as a whole. We run this before any insulation inspection because the number tells us where to look.
3. 3
   Thermal imaging and zone mapping. With the house pressured, we walk the envelope with a thermal camera. We mark every anomaly on a floor plan: rim joists, top plates, can light penetrations, hatch borders, wall cavities. On a Demilec home, we’re specifically looking for the failure modes above.
4. 4
   Inspection with photo documentation. We open the access points that matter - attic hatch, knee-wall door, rim joist bays, any area the thermal scan flagged. We photograph everything. You get the photo log, not a summary of it.
5. 5
   Duct leakage test if applicable. If your ducts run through the conditioned envelope or the attic, we test the duct system with a duct blaster to quantify leakage in CFM25. On Demilec homes with attic ductwork, this is where the hidden losses usually are.
6. 6
   The written report and the number. Before we leave, you get a printed report: pre-test ACH50, post-test ACH50 if we sealed anything on the spot, installed R-values by zone, thermal image stills, photo log, and a written scope for any follow-up work with a flat price. No estimates in the air, no “we’ll email it next week.” It’s in your hand.

What Demilec Home Energy Audit Costs in Chicago

Here’s the honest pricing posture, in dollars:

• Standard home energy audit, up to 2,500 sq ft: $299. Includes blower-door test, thermal imaging, full report, photo log.
• Home energy audit with duct leakage testing: $449 to $549 depending on duct system complexity. Includes everything in the standard audit plus a duct blaster test and CFM25 readings.
• Audit plus targeted air sealing on the spot: Add $150 to $400 for sealing the rim joist zones, hatch borders, or top plates we find during the audit. We do the sealing right then, while the house is pressured, and re-test to show the improvement. You see the before-and-after ACH50 number on the same visit.

What moves the price: square footage beyond 2,500, multiple attics, crawl space access, or a house with balloon-frame construction (very common in Chicago’s older neighborhoods like Irving Park and Portage Park) that takes longer to map. You will always get a written price before we start. Call (218) 261-7714 for a free estimate - and bring us any competing written audit estimate, and we will read it with you and tell you whether it covers the same scope.

Why Chicago Homeowners Call Topside Attic Insulation for Demilec Work

We’ve sealed and insulated more than 9,000 homes since 2016 under The Haven Standard, and every single one closed with a written record and a photo log. On Demilec work, the difference is in the testing. We run the blower-door test before any material goes in, and we publish the before-and-after numbers on every applicable job. That means you see the CFM50 drop after we seal the rim joists or the hatch border, not just our word that the work was done. Our technicians are background-checked and uniformed. A live person answers the phone 24/7. And if the Demilec product itself has failed - an off-ratio mix, a cure problem, a voided zone - we tell you plainly and give you a written scope for the fix, whether that’s a Demilec-compatible refill or a different material from the lines we work with, including Owens Corning, Johns Manville, Rockwool, GreenFiber, and in radiant barrier applications, Reflectix. No proprietary lock-in. The numbers decide.

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