Commerce Charter Township sits in the middle of Oakland County’s Lakes Area — Union Lake, Long Lake, Lower Straits, Proud Lake, Wolverine Lake just over the line. A large share of the housing here started life as a summer cottage and got converted, added onto, and lived in year-round. Those houses have a specific set of problems, and they are not the problems you find in a subdivision.
The Cottage-Conversion Problem
A cottage was built to be dry and shaded in July. It sits low, often on a shallow crawl space or piers, with a floor system exposed to outside air and a foundation that was never intended to hold back a Michigan winter. When someone insulates the attic and stops there, the house is still cold, because the heat is going out through the floor and the perimeter.
Our approach on these houses is bottom-up. Seal and insulate the crawl space so it becomes part of the conditioned building instead of a vented outdoor space. Foam the rim joist. Insulate any floor sections that hang over open air. Then, and only then, deal with the attic and the additions above.
Cold Floors
Closed-cell foam on crawl walls and rim, or directly under exposed floor framing.
Damp Crawls
Vents sealed and walls foamed so humid summer air stops condensing on cool block.
Odd Additions
Dormers, knee walls and sloped ceilings that have no room for a vent channel.
Drafty Perimeters
The joint between an old foundation and newer framing, sealed properly.
Where We Work Around Commerce
Union Lake, Long Lake, Lower Straits Lake, the Proud Lake area, Wolverine Lake, and the newer subdivisions off Wixom Road and Benstein. Neighboring communities on the same trip: West Bloomfield, Waterford, Walled Lake, White Lake, Milford and Novi. See every city we cover on the service area page.
Relevant service pages: basement and crawl space insulation, attic insulation, and spray foam insulation generally.
Commerce Township Insulation FAQs
My Commerce Township house started as a lake cottage. What does it need?
Almost always the floor and the crawl space. Cottages around Union Lake, Long Lake and Lower Straits were built for July, on shallow crawls or piers, with no thought given to February. The joist bays under the floor are usually empty or hold a sagging batt, and the crawl walls are bare block. We seal the crawl vents, spray closed-cell on the crawl walls and rim, and the floor above stops being cold. If the crawl is too shallow to work in we insulate the floor assembly directly from below.
Do you insulate second-story additions and dormers on lake homes?
Yes. Adding a second story or a shed dormer to a cottage is extremely common around Commerce and Wolverine Lake, and it creates awkward assemblies — short knee walls, sloped ceilings with no room for a vent channel, and connection points where the new framing meets the old. Closed-cell foam handles all three because it does not need a ventilation gap and it seals as it insulates.
Can you get equipment down to a house on a narrow lake lot?
Usually. Our rigs are truck-mounted and we run hose to the work area, so we do not need to park at the door. Tight private drives around the lakes are routine for us. If the access genuinely will not work, we will tell you at the estimate rather than on the day of the job.