‘Spray foam insulation left us in fear of losing our home
Homeowners who had spray foam installed on their property have told The i Paper they “live in fear of losing” their houses after major lenders refused mortgages on properties with the insulation fitted.
An estimated 250,000 homes in the UK have spray foam insulation within their roofs, much of which was installed under the previous Conservative government’s subsidised Green Homes Grant scheme.
When applied poorly, moisture can get trapped behind the foam, leaving roof timber at risk of dangerous rot. There is no way of checking the quality of the work and the roof’s timber eaves without removing all of the insulation.
It comes after the BBC revealed that a quarter of the UK’s biggest mortgage providers refuse to lend to homes fitted with spray foam insulation due to concerns about poor fitting, with many more requiring expensive additional surveyor checks.
Darryl and Selina, who declined to give their surname, told The i Paper that purchasing their Belfast home in 2022 was “probably one of the worst times of our lives” after mortgage brokers repeatedly refused to lend on their “dream home” due to the spray foam insulation being installed by the previous owners.
The couple, both 34, who were moving from Brighton to Northern Ireland at the time, had their mortgage application refused by Natwest at the valuation stage and were told their purchase “could not happen just because of the spray foam”.
“We were shocked because we did see [the insulation] when we went to the viewing but didn’t really know what it was,” Darryl said. “But we only found out when we had the mortgage value” and were told that all the insulation needed to be removed.
He said the existing owners had only just built the upstairs in preparation for selling the house and were forced to remove the insulation months later.
“The existing owners wanted us to pay, and obviously I said, ‘no way’. I said, ‘you know there’s no chance’,” Darryl explained. “I said, ‘it’s either you pay for it, or you’ll just have to get a cash buyer because everybody’s going to go through the same thing’.” The existing owner later obliged after the couple sought help from a specialist broker.
“I think it was about £7,000 to have it removed,” Darryl said. “The same guys who installed it just a few months earlier removed it.”
The couple said they were “shocked” that spray foam insulation was still allowed to be installed on homes.
“I’m shocked by the marketing,” Selina added. “The way that they make it so easy, and they say, ‘this will increase your heating, blah blah blah’. And yeah, maybe it’s fine. If in your lifetime you don’t ever want to sell your house.”
Darryl said: “I think it should be banned. I’m shocked that it’s allowed to exist. It’s disgraceful.
“Just even thinking about it now brings back horrible, painful memories, and I would hate for somebody else to go through this. I’ve told people at work about this. Nobody seems to know how bad this stuff is in terms of being able to get a mortgage.”
The couple said they thought about giving up on the move to Belfast but eventually decided the property was worth fighting for.
“We still have problems now, because we had to remortgage [after carrying over the previous deal from their former property] and even though the spray frame was taken out the surveyor could obviously see it had been there,” Selina said. The couple were then forced to go through a new roof survey again.
“So we will probably for the rest of our mortgage lives have to get a new roof survey,” they explained. “We still have to provide all this evidence, even though it’s been removed.”
The couple declined to give their surname as they feared this would jeopardise future remortgage applications. “At the end of the day I’m just very nervous about our house,” Darryl said.
Selina added: “This is how you feel. You feel like you’re not going to get the house until you’ve signed that dotted line. We live in fear of losing the house because [mortgage lenders] are going to see that [spray foam insulation] has been there and they’re going to deny us a mortgage again. And next thing you know, we’re screwed.”
Carol Cook, from Essex, told The i Paper that spray foam insulation had been “the bane of her life” for the past three years.
She and her husband installed the insulation after being told it would help save on their heating bills when the Government rolled out its Green Homes Grant scheme.
“We were not planning to sell anytime soon,” she said. “This is our forever home so we wanted to do what we thought was the best thing.”
Carol said they paid £7,500 and were initially very pleased with the results and noticed the home was much warmer.
“But then I was reading the newspaper earlier this year and noticed a few articles” about spray foam insulation, she said, adding that her husband had believed they had a different version of the affected spray foam and would not have any issues.
“Then I started worrying and worrying and I said to my husband, ‘let’s just get an independent surveyor’,” Carol added.
“The survey was up in the loft for quite a long time, and then he went, ‘can I show you this?’ And then he basically picked a bit of the insulation off, squeezed it, and water just poured out of it.”
She said the surveyor explained the installers had applied the spray foam incorrectly and that it would need to be removed urgently.
Carol said she contacted the installers but was told they had gone into liquidation and would not be able to reimburse the couple or remove the damp foam. She said they instead paid £6,500 to have the spray foam removed, costing them £14,000 in total.
She added: “The ironic thing is, this is all done because you’re trying to do the good for the environment and in all of this malarkey they took 350 bags of waste of this foam that all had to go to Landfill. And that was just from our one bungalow.”
Carol said she was in tears and could not sleep for weeks over the insulation problems. “It’s a lot of stress. It’s a lot of upset, but there’s nowhere to turn.”
While she did not believe spray foam insulation should be banned, the homeowner called for tighter regulation on the product and on the companies that install the foam.
