A 1 Ohio Valley RetroFoam

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Although there are bad reviews on Angie’s List concerning
A-1 Ohio Valley Retrofoam, I decided to take a chance on them for several
reasons: 1) Owner Ed Wasinger bought this company from another owner and the previous
owner racked up some terrible reviews. 2) Ed initially tried to talk me out of
having the home retrofoamed since it was built in 1992, but he listened to me
tell him that my instincts told me the walls seemed thin on the 3 vinyl sided
sides of the house and came out to look at my home and give me an estimate. 3) While
out for the estimate, Ed checked for insulation behind the walls and above the
downstairs garage and he accurately measured the areas I was looking to have
retrofoamed. His competitor (advertises on radio) took no measurements and did
not concern themselves with actually looking to see if the house might have
adequate insulation although they also said the house would possibly not need
the foam since it was built only 22 years ago. 4) Ed’s price beat his competitor’s
price by a nice margin. 5) I like to use a local family company as much as I
can when it seems affordable.
Ed’s workers overseen by his son arrived promptly as
scheduled and got to work. They soon discovered 2 major things, the first was
that the builder did not build to code and placed nearly all of the vinyl
siding of .5-inch foam board using no plywood whatsoever on 2 sides of the
house and only using plywood for a small portion of the house under a deck on
the 3rd side. The house on 100% of the north and south sides and 70%
of the west side (from which most of the weather originates) had the vinyl
siding attached to only half-inch foam board and behind that was only
fiberglass insulation and then the drywall. It is no wonder I thought the house
walls seemed thin in regards to weather and sound concerns. Even with the high quality
windows closed, I could still hear the neighbor’s yippy small dog that never
stops barking and loud riding lawn mowers which made me wonder if I even had
walls at times.
The second discovery was that the one area where the builder
actually used plywood was greatly water damaged by a previously unknown leak
from above it due to water dripping off the deck down behind the vinyl siding.
I had severe damage to 3 vertical 2x4’s, some horizontal 2x6’s, and 3 sheets of plywood with
the existing fiberglass insulation at rotting mess. Thankfully, I decided to
retrofoam and this was discovered as who knows how much worse it would have
been years down the line from this slow weather related leak. At the point of
discovery by the crew, Ed’s son called his dad and Ed dropped everything and
not only came out within 3 hours, but brought a contractor who happens to be
his brother-in-law out to survey the damage, determine the source of the water
and how to solve the problem and repair. Although this created a situation
where Ed’s crew had to pack up and come back to my home another day to finish
what should have been a 1-day job, Ed did not change his estimate and charge me
for that. If you are thinking that the contractor took advantage of my
situation and overcharged me, think again. I know he did not because I had my
trusted handyman come out and look at the damage and give me an assessment on
how to correctly solve and repair the problem and a ball park figure of what he
thought was a fair price. The contractor, Tony Keller, gave me that same fair
price. The plus for me is that I am
currently working with Tony to possibly do some gutter work around the house if
he can do it for a more reasonable price than quoted by a large company using
the same product.
After the repair was done by Tony, the day after it was
discovered, Ed’s crew came back out the very next day and finished the
retrofoam. I cam already tell the house does not heat up near as quickly as
before and the sound indoors is much more hushed and the yippy dog is only
annoying with the windows open. This was a great investment and I encourage
everyone to look past the bad reviews and trust my review of this company and
the other good reviews that seem certain to follow.

I have a 160 year old house and my kitchen was very cold in winter. A-1 Retrofoam discovered pockets of space in the attic above the kitchen where cold air was seeping down the wall into my kitchen cabinets. They were very thorough and efficient in blowing the insulation into the attic space. They even foam insulated around the window in the attic. The job took only a day and they were very careful about cleaning up after themselves. Last winter was an extremely cold one but my kitchen was noticeably warmer and I have turned that once unusable attic space into a walk-in closet! I would definitely recommend them to anyone.
Kate W

A-1 did a great job, they arrived and completed the job as expected. A-1 was very easy to work with. I would use them again.