Ever wonder why your floors feel cold even after you've insulated the attic? The culprit is probably your rim joist โ and most Northeast Arkansas homeowners have never heard of it.
The rim joist is the band of framing that sits on top of your foundation wall, right where the floor system begins. It's riddled with gaps, and in an older Jonesboro or Trumann home it's often completely uninsulated. Cold outside air pours straight in โ all winter long.
Here's the fix contractors love: two inches of closed-cell spray foam applied directly to the rim joist cavity. Two inches gets you roughly R-13, seals air infiltration at the same time, and takes a two-person crew maybe two hours on a typical ranch house. At $1.50โ$2.25 per board foot installed, a full rim joist job on a 1,500 SF footprint usually runs $300โ$600 โ one of the best dollars-per-impact upgrades in the building envelope.
IRC R402.2 requires rim joists in climate zone 3 (that's us) to meet a minimum R-5, but stopping there leaves serious money on the table. We almost always shoot for R-13 to R-19 because the payback period is typically under three heating seasons at current Entergy Arkansas rates.
Fall is the perfect window. Temperatures are dropping, crawl spaces and basements are still workable, and you'll feel the difference before the first hard freeze hits โ usually late October here in the Delta. Don't heat the outdoors all winter.
Reply or DM us for a free rim joist estimate. We serve Jonesboro, Trumann, Paragould, and surrounding communities.