Around here it gets cold in the winter, so it’s always been surprising to me that Lowes has had exactly NO extruded foam products. I’ve always gotten mine at Home Depot, they carry Owens-Corning pink in various thicknesses. Nothing wider than the 2x8 sheets though. Imagine my surprise today while walking through Lowes to grab some benchwork wood, they had 4x8 sheets of 2" thick GREEN extruded polystyrene. This may not come as a shock to many of you who have found such products in your local Lowes for years now, but it’s big news around here - I now have alternate sources. Plus the green is less than 2x the price of the pink, so cutting a single 4x8 sheet in half will be clightly cheaper. And the nearest Lowes is more convenient than the nearest HD, although neither is really far away. And if one is out and I NEED a piece, well, I can get it at the other place. Looks like until paitign and scenery, my layout will be a combination of the pink and green prairie. Or workers digging a foundation may break through the green layer to uncover an underlying wierd pink rock formation.
–Randy
Randy,
I had never seen any pink foam in Lowes only the blue stuff and found out a few weeks a go that the color really doesn’t matter. The next day my son and I went to Lowes on one of our weekend chore runs and they were having a side walk clearance sale of sort. they had 1" foam in 4x8 sheets for $4.00/ea. I bought the entire pallet. Not for scenery but to insulate the addition on the back of my shop. Have never seen the green stuff it has to be easier on the eyes then this god forsaken pink stuff.
I picked up some of the green stuff at a construction site once. It was used under a poured concrete floor. It carved better than either weight of the blue. It held better detail.
The problem with all this foam stuff is that each vendor makes many different kinds that on the surface all look the same.
For example, in Owens-Corning pink, they have Fomular 150, 250, adn 350. Around here, Home Depot usually stocks the 250 variety. According to the Ownes-Corning product page, the number refers to the crush strength or something along those lines, in PSI. So the 150 will be fairly soft, and the 350 should be more dense and carve smoother. But, we only get 250 here, in between version.
Dow, makers of the blue stuff, also have multiple products in multiple densities. Neither major bigbox store around here sells blue foam sheets.
The green stuff - I have no idea who makes it. The sheet I looked at just had the Lowes name on it, so its something made and sold under the Lowes house brand. I negected to look at other info printed on the sheet as to strength or anything, but it felt more substantial than Fomular 250. I did notice the infro printed on the 4x8x2" sheet I looked at only listed the R-value for 1/2" thick - wierd. They did also have available other thicknesses besides 2". I did notice it said extruded polystyrene so it’s the right stuff.
I also think some of these product differences account for some of the different results various people have obtained using foam board. There seems to be a generic “if it says extruded polystyrene then it’s the right stuff” mentality, but with each maker offering multiple varieties of said extruded polystyrene, and with regional differences as to what products are available in different areas, we may not all be using the exact same stuff. And given the primary differentiation seems to be density of the board - at last we see why some people use foam and hate it, say it’s too loud, and others use it and say it’s nice and quiet.
&nb
Problem with the foam sheets at our local (CT) Home Depot is that the 2x8s are tongue and groove; handy if combining width, annoying is you just want a 2ft wide part.
Our local Lowes (Martinsburg, WV) started carrying the green extruded polystyrene insulation board only in 4’ x 8’ sheets in 3/4", 1" and 2" thicknesses about a month or two ago after they had a clearance sale on the Dow blue insulation board, which they no longer carry. The 2" sheet initially sold for approximately $30, but recently they’ve dropped the price to $27/sheet. The name of the green board is Green-Guard and it’s manufactured by Pactiv. You can get the spec.sheet on the product by going to www.green-guard.com. I bought some a few weeks ago and have found that it’s surface takes acrylic latex paint well and it cuts easily with a circular saw or jig saw. The saw dust created does tend to stick to surfaces so you may want to do your cutting outside as I did. Have a shop vac available after cutting to dust off the cut sheets before taking them into your house. I’ve not put any track on it yet so I don’t know about it’s sound transmitting characteristics. My guess is that since it appears to be the same as the blue and pink insulation board in its composition, that its sound qualities will also be the same.
Bob
And that answers that. The product information sheet mentions it can be printed with your custom logo (hence the sheets labelled with the Lowes logo), and the product data sheet indicates it has the same 25 PSI compressive strength as the pink Foamular 250 from Owens-Corning, so it should be about the same density.
–Randy