The John Zay Guest House addition won a Building Industry Community Spirit Award at the International Builders’ Show (IBS). The builder is Vantage Homes, a longtime customer of USI Powers Insulation in Colorado Springs, CO. The addition nearly doubled the size of the original Guest House, a place where families of patients of Penrose Hospital can stay. Nine new rooms and two suites were added for families who live more than 30 miles from Penrose Hospital and whose loved ones are undergoing critical medical treatments. We are proud to say we helped make it so that the families of patients can enjoy very quiet and comfortable rooms.

This is a very unique project to be a part of. It is a home that is similar to a Ronald McDonald house, for patients’ families visiting the hospital. Vantage Homes completed the first phase of this light commercial project in 2007. USI has been working on it as sections of the job are completed. USI provided the labor at no charge. USI would like to thank George Hess, the owner of Vantage Homes, for giving us the opportunity to provide our services on this project and to be part of such a worthy endeavor. We also thank HBA Cares, whose primary mission is to assist other non-profit agencies with construction needs or housing/construction related programs supporting Pikes Peak Region individuals and families.

USI sprayed open cell spray foam on the roof deck and closed cell spray foam in the exterior walls. We also installed net and blow insulation over the closed cell foam and in all partition walls for sound attenuation. The material was donated by Accella and Johns Manville. There were some unique building challenges on this project. The attic has a wet fire sprinkler system so changing from a vented (non-conditioned attic) with R38 blown fiberglass on the attic floor to a (conditioned attic) with open cell foam on the underside of the roof deck made perfect sense.

From our (USI’s) recommendation, Vantage had their architect and HERS rater re-calculate the heat specs using the continuous coverage – cathedral, performance path method. The windows had a u-value of 0.32 so this calculation of R21 open cell met the heat calculation specs. Vantage was then able to go back to the Regional building department and splice in the open cell spec.

We also changed the spec of full cavity closed cell in the walls to 2” of closed cell with net and blow fiberglass hybrid over to eliminate the extra labor and waste of cutting back the full cavity closed cell foam. USI installed 36,000 board feet of open cell spray foam and 11,320 board feet of closed cell foam. Vantage also applied sheet rock to one side of all interior walls and we net and blew them for sound attenuation and privacy in all occupied rooms.