I live in Southern California and I cannot find any 1 or 2 inch foam board to use on my layout building. I’ve been to all the box store’s Lowe’s, Home Depot, but all they carry is the type that has aluminum foil on it and is 2 inche’s thick.
Anybody have any Idea as to where I can find some?
Good luck. I live in Arizona and have the same problem. Be aware that the 2" thick foam with aluminum foil is beaded, not extruded. I already made that mistake. I have found one Home Depot in my area that carries 1" extruded foam, but none of the others do. As for 2" extruded, there is none to be found. Special ordering is not an option–it is not in the special order catalog. It seems that this type of insulation is only available in cold weather locations.
Byron Henderson has some California sources listed on his web site. http://www.layoutvision.com/id44.html
Foam is rarely stocked in warm weather parts of the country. Sales are too minimal.
A long while back a brouhaha started up on forums about whether or not Home Depot in SoCal would special order it for you. In fact, it rather irritated Byron that someone would challenge the research he had done showing the big box stores don’t have it. Turns out they will special order but only if you put the store between a rock and a hard place. An email to HD corporate resulted in a store manager saying yes he would order but only because corporate told him to satisfy the customer. A HD store minimum order is 48 sheets. The manager clearly did not want to have the foam in stock with no prospect of future sales but to prevent a nastygram from corporate he would do it. No reasonable person could ask the manager to order 48 sheets so they could buy 1 or 2. The original forum poster had a heart, he did not force the store to order. Moral of the story? Use Byron’s list and send him a thank you note for doing all the legwork.
I’ve seen these threads before, about people in Southern California not able to get extruded foam at Home Depot or Lowes.
But they were able to find the stuff at other places. Sorry I don’t remember the names. Maybe search the forums here. Or just Google the extruded foam in your area, and you should find a retailer that sells it.
A Google search found these retailers in Southern Cali
http://www.alliedbuilding.com/
http://www.thomasnet.com/southern-california/extruded-foam-profiles-26824409-1.html
Try hot tub manufacturers, motor home makers, etc.
Jerry
Go to website of Dow-Corning or Johns Manvile and search for dealers in your area. This is a product that builders might use but home owners in your area would not. Smaller Lumber yards are more likely to have it than big boxes. Roofers also have good product that you can get, and usually have 2" fiberglass boards with tar paper on both sides. This works real well too. The donut shop in Bismarck was having a new roof put on, and LION dived into their dumpster to come up with plenty of usable pieces of material.
But hey! Go for the 48 sheet package, and then build a really BIG layout.
Hey! wait a minute, Here in North Dakota I could get all of the two inch that I want, so how come I built my layout almost entirely with 1/2 inch (Celotex, not foam)
Go figure. LIONS gotta build with what they can find in the barn or in the gymnasium. We got some wonderful 1.5" extruded white foam there, it was removed from the Library Roof, and will make good material for what I want, but not for trackways, because the surface is no longer even. (People walk on roofs, you know).
Look around you, there is more material lying around for the taking than you can imagine. Go to a construction site and ask about what scraps you want, they will likely give it to you.
RAOR
I called the distributer here in Houston and they stock the 2" and will sell it by the sheet but it requires a trip to downtown to pick it up. I imagine most large cities would have the same availability even in warm climates as some commercial applications use it most anywhere. I just stack up the 1" as it gets covered with sculptamold or plaster cloth anyway.
Maybe you were at the wrong store. Maybe a hobby shop would be interested in stocking it. Maybe him get in league with dealers in other cities and split the cost, each one getting 12 sheets.
Of course he will have to have a much higher mark up, for he has to “earn interest” on the material in stock in his store, just as we would from putting the money in his bank. But given bank interest these days, perhaps this would be a better place to put money.
ROAR
An enterprising hobby shop could even portion them out into 2x4 panels, for ease of displaying in the store, handing, and so on. Then charge a premium for it.
Art supply stores that cater to architects already do it!
Not realistic. Dow is not going to split a minimum order and ship to four different cities.
ok Thank’s everyone for your post’s. You have all been extremly helpful.
No No NO… Hobby shop 1. places an order at Home Depot, takes all 48 boards and delivers them to those hobby shops that went in on the deal. One would NEVER expect the manufacturer or wholesaler to do that, this is the job of jobbers, a vanishing breed in this country.
ROAR
They are going to take the time drive them to the all of the “different cities” you mentioned earlier? That seems unlikely out here in the real world.
I’ve had much better luck by dealing with lumberyards who sell all sorts of sheetgoods and building supplies to home builders They only had 4x8 sheets in 2" foam but they have 1" in 48"x96" Matthew
Beaded works great!!!