I wanted to follow on to this thread about finding sources for
the more esoteric Roxul products. I would have added to the comment
chain over there, but doing that never seems to make the thread
actually become visible again in the “QA” section. It also relates
to *this other thread where some discussion of projects similar to
mine had started up.

I’ve decided to go ahead with the partial-foundation-exterior blanketing
project, slapping 2″ Comfortboard IS on the upper three feet or so which
will cover the 18 to 24 inches of exposed CMU and go some nominal way
into the grade. The hardest part so far, even ahead of minor digging
and wire-brushing all the exposed surface to get down to virgin concrete,
has been sourcing product. Roxul has this theoretical relationship to
distribute through Primesource and thence Home Depot, even noted on their
website, but it turns out that this chain is a seriously broken mess
that totally did not work out for me.

Originally I wanted Comfortboard CIS, which is a bit more dense than
IS [at minor expense of R-value] but seemed more suited for long-term
adhesion. It turned out after several phone calls that CIS is considered
a specialty “commercial” product and thus Primesource did not carry it,
as they claimed to only handle residential stuff. Eventually I located
a commercial supplier who could get me CIS, but only in minimum orders
of full pallets which is about twice what I needed. Roxul’s customer
service said they’d research this a little and see what they could “do
for me”, but they never called back.

I gave up, and fell back to IS, figuring that with appropriate adhesion-
area reinforcement that it would do, and I *could* get that through the
Primesource / HD chain. That is mostly true although it takes a bit of
persuasion with the people at the contractor desk that the stuff actually
exists, but then they could not quote me a price any lower than about
*three times* what I knew the street price of the stuff to be. Probably
because IS comes in three-pack bags, and between HD’s computer system
and Primesource’s computer system they kept being confused about quantity
in pieces or bags. The two-inch Comfortboard, be it IS or CIS, weighs
in around $1000 per “msf”, e.g. 1000 square feet, so thus just a little
over a dollar a square foot.

The commercial supplier quoted a more reasonable price on IS with a
minimum just about the exact amount I needed, so the stuff is finally
on the way. But getting to that point has been absolute HELL. After
the order was all set up I called Roxul back and just *unloaded* on
their customer-service people about this, telling them point-blank that
if they want to sell plenty of product into the US that they *have* to
get these supply-chain issues straightened out NOW. And that I wanted
to see them sell lots of it here, as it is good stuff, and that the
reason I was making that followup call was to help them out and point
out the problems I had run into. The rep said they’d bring all this to
the attention of “national sales managers” and get their vendors more
trained up on product distribution.

So to help answer the question in that prior thread, my own experience
sourcing Roxul has been a miserable uphill battle. Anyone else have
a happier story to tell, especially where the more “specialty” items
are concerned??

_H*