Home Improvement
My goal is to keep hot/cool air from seeping between floors. Is canned spray foam the way to go? Any recommendations? Pest resistance is a bonus.
If you're worried about pests, put some steel wool in there as well.
Mice will just chew through spray foam
They have anti-pest spray foam.
What ever you do, don't do what I did.
Buy a 3D printer to make a custom cover. 2 years later you'll be too busy maintaining ("upgrading") your printer that you'll forget why you got it in the first place.
Old socks and unused cheesecake. I think.
I may be wrong.
You would want something like this. The important part is that it comes in two pieces so you can install it without having to disconnect anything to pass it through. The brushes are to resist airflow, but they are obviously not going to be airtight or pest resistant. For that, I would use expanding foam insulation. Those cables and pipes aren't going anywhere, and if you absolutely had to replace one, removing the sprayfoam is a trivial effort compared to the rest of the job.
This feels like the best answer. Those are your air conditioner lines. You probably don't want to seal them in with spray foam.
Your best way to keep pests out is to track those lines from your A/C unit outside to where they enter your house. Seal that up with the pest resistant foam if there is any daylight.
Shove some rockwool insulation into the hole. You can finish with steel wool too for added pest protection. Then put the cable cover up to make it look pretty.
Are those water lines? The off-white one looks like an electric cable, which I don't like (potential for it to rub against the edge of the hole and wear the insulator).
Looks like refrigerant lines to an A/C system to me. Cold line is covered in insulation and hot line is bare. White cable could be power to the unit.
That's not to code...
If this is the ceiling and a small room I would put a utility ceiling in. Where I live for a room like a simple washing room that would be 150 euros tops and you can always run new wires and get to the old ones without hassle. Nothing else will make it look pretty.
If it were me I’d design and 3D print something to mount around it that would be held together with either rubber bands or possible screwed together. But I realize that is outside of most people’s skillset. Maybe you could get somebody to design something and get it printed online. But I guarantee it would take a couple of iterations and probably cost upwards of a $100.
Maybe something like this…
For aesthetics it should be something like one of those wall plate covers that has something like furry brushes on the sides. But this is looks like something you’d need a professional to do because that looks electric and may not be something you want to touch.
I’d upload an image, but it’s not letting me and my previous comments linking Amazon have been blocked, so not sure how I can show you without trying to describe it.
Duct tape
Expanding spray foam.
Don't do that, there's wires and pipes in there. If anything needs maintenance or replacing it's a nightmare with expanding foam gluing everything together.
Just put in some steel mesh on the bottom, fill with isolation materials, lock it in with more steel mesh and put a nice cover plate over it.
You can cut it with a knife or a jab saw. It's used in AC installation all the time.
Once dried it's quite easy to just rip foam out
Also a huge fire hazard, don't do this.
Concrete in a super soaker 50
I think people are voting on the practicality of this suggestion, but I think it's a hilarious image. I had a super soaker 30 when I was in early double-digits and it was so much fun to load stuff other than water in it.
Needs moar asbestos and lead.