The Orange Foam Incident
Apr/01/08 08:25 AM
Last night was our final run through before the dry wall goes up (being installed as I write this). So we scrambled around until about 1:00 in the morning finishing up all the little details. One of which was, using orange fire-foam to seal off the range hood vent pipe in the attic (which is a fire retardant foam related to Great Stuff foam).
So I gathered up all of the tools that I would need and climbed into the attic from the second floor. From there I sealed myself in with the foam backer board, and Kristin put up the insulation behind that. I would go out the gable vent that I had removed the cover from and placed a ladder to previously.
I trimmed the duct and used the foam to seal the gaps around the duct and the roof vent... This is where it all went horribly awry. “After I sealed the duct I thought, gee I have all this extra. I will seal the duct at the ceiling.” So I bent down and finished off the rest of the can, and at that precise moment I felt a strange “KER-PLOP” right in the middle of my back. Yes, somehow the foam managed to unstick itself from the vent and fall off... onto me. Well, fortunately, not all of the foam fell on me; some, in fact, fell onto the board I was kneeling on. In the process of fussing with the huge blob of orange foam on my back, I managed to plant my knee smack dab into the middle of the blob on the board. This would have been fine had I not been wearing jeans that I had recently ripped the knee out of, the foam squished inside my pant leg.
After a stream of curses, that would have made the burliest of sailors tell me to watch my mouth, I came to realize that if I didn’t reseal the vent above me I would have to come back up here and do it all over again. But I was out of foam... “Wait, there is a huge blob right in front of me.” So I used the closest tool I could find to reapply the blob of foam... my bare hand. It seemed like a good idea at the time, I now know differently. Once it was on my hand it started spreading like a highly infectious disease. It was then on my other hand, on my tools, my clothes; and on top of all of that, the rock-wool insulation from the attic was getting mixed up in it. At this point I realized that I needed to abandon ship before I was permanently encased in orange foam in my attic. I stood up as best I could and hastily made my way to the vent opening and on my way I slipped on the ceiling joist that I was traversing and fell across the other joists (If I’d slipped in orange foam, I would not be surprised). I now have a 2X4 shaped bruise across my ass and side. Kristin came running outside to see if I was OK and honestly, my pride seemed to be hurt worse than anything. I threw the tools out and climbed down the ladder. As I climbed down, I noticed that every step was accentuated with the ripping of the dried foam that was tangled in the hairs surrounding my kneecap. Kristin got a fresh shirt for me to change into and we sat down to read the empty foam canister on what to do in case of skin contact. To my horror, the can said: DO NOT apply a solvent. It said to apply mineral oil and that EVENTUALLY it would wear off...ugh.
I managed to get an exacto blade and “shave” off most of the foam around my kneecap, but no amount of Gojo or scrubbing seems to make any difference to the foam on my hands.