Spray Foaming

There are several options for one to consider when insulating a narrowboat - Rockwool, polystyrene, kingspan (other insulation brands available), spray foam - all with their relative advantages and disadvantages. Rockwool is cheap but will hold water if it gets wet. Polystyrene is cheap and kingspan has good insulative properties, but both will allow condensation behind the slabs. Spray foam adheres to the steel (and pretty mych everything else) which stops any condensation from forming and has good insulative properties but will leave your wallet significantly lighter.

For us the choice was obvious. Having spent a significant amount of cash to get the new cabin built it seemed wise to use spray foam to protect the steel from the inside (where you can't normally see the damage that the condensation is doing) and insulate the boat well at the same time. The spray foam went in this week after a slight panic when we realised that the van couldn't get into the car park due to a height restriction. Queue several frantic phone calls and reversing through a lock (well done Sophie for sorting that one) but eventually the van got to the boat. We used a company called Cosyhome, who I'd recommend, they were no-nonsense, flexible, and accomodating, and aparrently they're cheaper than the competition (though still not exactly what I'd call "cheap").

The infamous van.

The whole boat was masked and foamed in a day, which left us with the task of trimming back the excess foam and removing everything covering the battens. To do this you take an old saw (new saws will soon become blunt) and cut away the foam covering the battens as well as any foam that is propruding further than the battes as this will interfere with the lining. The masking tape comes away from the battens and the excess foam falls away. Sounds simple but it's made harder by the fact that the foam has encased the battens and you have to saw through the foam just to find the batten in the first place.

Caution men working.

We found that using an old chisel was useful  to take the excess foam from the battens in the roof. Because these are curved it was difficult to follow the curve with the saw and we kept eating into the batten whereas the chisel would follow the curve and take the excess off much more easily.

Foam covers the battens.

The majority of the trimming back was done by  eye, but once you get ast a certain point it becomes difficult to see what needs trimming off so we used a piece of timber to span the gap between two battens and see any high points which would interfere with the lining. These high points were then highlighted with a permanent marker and trimmed off.

Then we were just left with the task of cleaning up the mess we'd made, which took a not so lazy sunday morning, and lots of sweeping and hoovering. The whole process took about a day and a half with several people helping out. Thanks go out to my dad, Luke, and Sophie's dad for all their help. The task would have been significantly bigger without you! Now that this is complete, we can begin lining out the boat but you'll have to wait for the next thrilling installment for that story!

Sophie tackles the roof.