From time to time we’ve talked about ways of using canned spray foam to cover areas. A product that intrigued me was the FoamBeak (on Amazon at: 
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01EAZJWG8 ) which is a nozzle you put on a can of spray foam with the intent of creating a wider pattern. I had ordered one a few months ago and never got around to trying it. Today I was stuck inside while the remnants of Tropical Storm Ophelia passed overhead and I had a few cans of foam left over from another project. I also had a fieldstone basement which I had sprayed with a FrothPak-style kit a while ago, and run out when I was 99% done and there was a little patch that needed touching up.  So all the stars aligned. 

Impressions: it works, kind of. It lays down a 3″ wide bead of foam, just like they claim. Unlike the 2-part kits it doesn’t spray the foam at all, it oozes out. Think of icing a cake with a pastry bag. On flat walls I could lay down a pretty good layer, but since this is rough stone there were spots where it overhangs and I could not get the foam to stick where there was any overhang.  However, I found that if I took the tubing off the spraygun it would shoot the foam with enough force to stick on those tricky sections. What I ended up doing was spraying out most of a can with the FoamBeak on, skipping the sections where the foam wouldn’t stick. Then I’d take the last bit of the can, remove the tip, and get some foam on the tricky sections. I’d let everything harden. When I came back there’d be globs of foam that had hardened which gave me enough purchase to fill out the layer there. I was eventually able to get a layer of foam several inches thick over the whole section.

I used a pro-style foam gun, and the FoamBeak didn’t fit onto my gun. I cut a short piece of tubing and taped it with electrical tape to the FoamBeak.  I’ve attached a picture of the finished job and the gun. In the picture you can see a couple spots where a big blob of foam formed and then fell off the wall onto the floor. 

The big thing I’ll say about this method is that it is very, very slow. It took me about ten minutes to spray out a can, which the label claimed was 20 board feet. When I did the FrothPak my recollection was I sprayed 600 board feet in about 30 minutes. So two board feet per minute  for the FoamBeak, 20 for the FrothPak.

The big advantage is that it is a lot neater and less hazardous. When spraying two-part foam I cover every inch of my body, Tyvek suit, booties, gloves. I wear goggles and a respirator. The uncured foam goes everywhere and it sticks aggressively. For the FoamBeak I just wore safety glasses and gloves. 

The foam I used is stuff called Vega Bond PurpleCoat, I bought a case from Amazon as an experiment ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09HV91S9Z ).  It isn’t quite like Great Stuff and not at all like two-part foam. The cured product is light and tears pretty easily, more like open-cell foam. It as a slightly waxy feel, like polyethylene foam. It does seem somewhat prone to air pockets. I have no idea what the R-value is, how water-resistant it is, or whether it’s a fire risk. And I don’t care for the purple color. The big advantage is it’s a lot less aggressively adhesive than Great Stuff or two-part, if you get it someplace you don’t want it you can cut it or peel it off. 

I guess my overall impression is that it’s a tool for the toolbox. I wouldn’t want to do a whole house with it, but I could see spots where it comes in handy.