For months after Daphne Wood had spray foam roof insulation installed, she was surprised to receive cold calls every week from firms badgering her to spend thousands of pounds – to have it removed.
Her decision to have spray foam put in her loft after receiving a call from a company out of the blue appears to have triggered unsolicited nuisance calls and visits to her home.
These visits from no fewer than three rogue companies saw the 81-year-old widow and former secretary in schools and universities, from Iver, Buckinghamshire, agree to her roof being re-tiled twice and the foam removed.
The experience, Daphne admits, has left her ‘traumatised’.
Daphne is not alone. According to Trading Standards, cases like hers are on the rise after recording a 42 per cent increase in spray foam scams in 2023.
There also appears to be a link between the companies installing the spray foam and the companies that then contact customers telling them that the foam is faulty and will damage the roof.
Targeted: Daphne Wood’s decision to have spray foam put in her loft after receiving a call from a company has triggered unsolicited nuisance calls and visits to her home
Katherine Hart, Chartered Trading Standards Institute lead officer for doorstep crime, scams and consumer vulnerability, said: ‘We’ve found that some firms have the same address as the company that installed the foam in the first place. It’s not always the case but there certainly seems to be a rise in that.’
Hart says lists of customers who have spray foam are also being traded, legally but also illegitimately.
Salesman prey on households who are fearful about rising energy bills. Some also falsely promise that work they carry out will be reimbursed by government grants when they have not been applied for or households are not eligible.
There are grants available in some cases, such as the Great British Insulation Scheme, which is administered by the energy regulator Ofgem, but it is only available to the least energy-efficient homes in the UK.
Some customers are persuaded to pay £250 over the phone for a survey that never takes place.
‘These people are very good at their job and they’ll use any means possible to get you to agree,’ says Hart. ‘Don’t sign on the spot and become a victim of their high-pressure sales tactics.’
Not all spray foam roof insulation needs to be removed. This type of insulation, which has been installed in 250,000 homes according to the Property Care Association, is a chemical product that when sprayed onto an area expands to fill in gaps.
Closed cell foam sets hard and is typically used to patch up roofs that are near the end of their lifespan.
Open cell, which is spongy when pressed, is used for insulation and, when carefully applied by a manufacturer-approved installer, can be an effective way to keep your house warm.
However, cowboy installers can cause damage to homeowners’ roofs. For example, if incorrectly installed it can lead to dampness and condensation on the underside of a roof because it forms an air barrier and stops moisture escaping.
Consequently, many mortgage lenders are reluctant to lend on these homes, making them difficult to sell. Equity release lenders, meanwhile, have a blanket ban on properties with spray foam.
Daphne’s spray foam saga began in December 2022. With a four-bedroom detached 1930s house to heat and a poorly insulated roof still in place, Daphne agreed – when she was phoned by Advance Home Solutions – to have someone come to look at her roof.
A workman arrived the following day and Daphne agreed to have foam spray installed at a cost of £4,000.
She was pressured into a next-day installation – or else face an 11-week wait – and wasn’t offered a 14-day cooling-off period, which experts say should be standard.
The following day one workman arrived and took just two hours to spray foam all over the inside of her loft, roof tiles and rafters.
Even the suitcases stored in there got doused. ‘It looked like an igloo up there after he’d finished,’ she says.
Five months later, in May 2023, another cold call from the same company. Daphne was persuaded to have a next-day review of her insulation.
The company claimed it had found two leaks in her roof that needed repairing and asked for a further £2,000 to fix them.
Daphne reluctantly agreed, but the cold calls didn’t stop there. By the end of the year, she was receiving around one cold call a week from similar companies asking about her insulation and offering to remove it.
‘I didn’t continue the phone conversations and the firms didn’t say who they were, except that it was in connection with the government home efficiency scheme,’ added Daphne. They said they had obtained her number from ‘shared data’.
In August 2024, Daphne had her roof re-tiled by a cold caller who claimed her house had rotting rafters.
Then in January 2025, two men from a roofing company turned up unannounced on Daphne’s doorstep declaring broken gutters and rotting woodwork were visible from the pavement.
Mortgage issues: Spray foam insulation is a chemical product that when sprayed onto an area expands to fill in gaps
A £300 quote for repairs soon escalated as she was told the roof would need to be re-tiled again, and it required new guttering.
A weatherproofed membrane was applied, her crumbling chimney was taken down and the spray foam was completely removed just two years after it had been installed. It had been responsible for her rotting timbers, which had been unable to ‘breathe’.
By that time, she had read that spray foam makes a property difficult to sell, so she was also keen to have it removed.
Daphne estimates that the total bill for the spray foam – including the initial installation and subsequent removal – reached around £10,000.
‘I’m feeling a bit traumatised. I’m quite a trusting person and it’s shaken me,’ she says. ‘They look at you so convincingly and tell you they’re not ripping you off.’
Chief executive of consumer group HomeOwners Alliance Paula Higgins is urging anyone with spray foam not to act on these scaremongering tactics from foam removal firms.
‘Don’t deal with any cold callers,’ she says, adding that once you have used the services of a cold caller you can end up on a list of vulnerable consumers that is then sold on to other firms selling anything from windows and conservatories to roof services.
‘Ask yourself how they got your number in the first place; and if they say they can come around the next day, alarm bells should ring,’ she adds.
‘A proper company would need to book you in weeks or months in advance. Always demand a 14-day cooling-off period.’
Unless you are planning to sell your property or take out equity release you may not need to have the foam removed at all.
However, homeowners concerned that spray foam insulation has damaged their roof can contact an independent chartered surveyor listed on the Royal
Institution of Chartered Surveyors website. They can check the condition of the roof by cutting away a section of the foam at a cost of between £150 to £250.
Or, if you have all the correct paperwork from the installer, the Property Care Association has a list of surveyors trained to check that your foam has been sprayed correctly. This could strengthen your chances of selling your home without having it removed.
If you decide to have the insulation taken out, contact three local and reputable roofing companies to ask for a quote which will involve removing all roof tiles and underfelt so the foam can be removed, which can cost between £5,000 and £8,000.
Higgins recommends you approach a roofing firm rather than a foam removal company as they are more likely to give you an impartial view on whether it should be taken out.
Carry out the usual checks, such as asking to see previous work and for reviews.
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