There is a lot of spray foam used in my small locale. Ten years ago, there were no local foamers. Builders hired subs that came in from 100 miles away or further.
The huge majority of new homes built here during the bubble were vacation homes for the wealthy, and most all of these got foamed. They all got built for clients paying on a cost-plus basis, and some of the GCs thought they could make money being foamers themselves. I saw at least three builders buy or lease gear and become foamers, themselves.
Looks easy, right? All is contained in a small trailer or truck, the gear looks like a glorified spraypainters setup, you only buy the raw materials you need when you need them, and hey, you can charge your customers up to $1.50 a board foot, installed.
I'm sure that the builders that bought the setups thought that the equipment costs could be paid off quickly. I've no idea how they made out.
Would like to hear from a pro-foamer or two as to how much sales volume it takes to get clear of your startup costs.
Here is what I know about foam. For a while, in the 90s, I did the buying and supply negotiations for a company that was using foam for the manufacture of steel and fiberglass entry doors. Usage was such that tanker truck loads came a couple times weekly each to two large door plants, and deals were made with outfits like BASF, Mobay, and others, for the supply. Costs then were about 80 cents per pound, for side A or B, and the system design was for a foam that gelled and rose to a finished density of 2.0 pcf. Isocyanurate. Rigid foam. Closed cell. Pretty similar stuff to what is sprayed into wall and roof cavities in residential work nowadays.
So, at the density of 2, a cubic foot costs $1.60 in materials, if you get your resins at the .80 I mentioned. That cubic foot will slice to 12 board feet. If you can buy your resins at the same .80, and sell your work for, say, $1.00 per b.f. installed, your installed material costs are $1.60, while your revenue amounts to $12.
Nice work if you can get it.
Now, let's say that a little insulation sub, one rig, a few employees, cannot buy nearly as well as the big door company buying resin by the tanker loads, almost one each day. He is buying small. Drums. A few each week, maybe. Maybe even less. Let's say he pays not .80 per pound, but five times that.
This puts his material cost, per c.f. of foam sprayed in place at a 2 pcf density, at 8 bucks. If he is selling for 12 (that is the $1 per board foot), he is still maybe OK. A 2500 sf house, with on average maybe 16,000 bf of foam in it, the foaming job yielding $16K in revenue against about $10.7K in material costs, might look like good business.
I see the crews looking like one guy in the trailer with the drums and the pumps, and one other guy, the sprayer, all duded out in a zoom bag looking like he is ready for a space walk. Two guys. Maybe four full days to do that 16K bf job in the 2500 sf house. Let's say that costs the owner a total of $2800, in fully-burdened labor. The owner is now looking at maybe a gross profit for the job of $2,500, or 15.6 percent of revenue.
So, let's here some detail from the foamers. What does it take to get into this, and what should be one's expectations?
