Submit Your Documentation

What moves a record

The four evidence marks on the sealant and accessory pages and the scored lines on the kit pages are earned by specific documents. These are the ones that count, in the order they matter:

1. A technical data sheet with a date or revision number, covering the exact product and can size sold. A sheet for the gun can does not cover the straw can.
2. The surface-burning test report behind any fire claim: the standard (ASTM E84 or UL 723), the laboratory, the report or file number, the tested thickness and configuration, and both indices.
3. The thermal test behind any R-value: the method (ASTM C518, C177, C1363 or C1114), the thickness, and whether the value is aged. A conductivity figure from another method is recorded as what it is.
4. An EPA registration number for any pesticide claim, or an establishment number and a plain statement that the product is a device, for a mechanical claim.
5. A safety data sheet in current format.
6. A code evaluation report (ICC-ES or equivalent) where an assembly use is claimed.
7. Marketplace identity: which ASINs and item numbers are yours, which sellers are authorized, and the pack size behind each listing.

Before you send it

• Do not send anything confidential. A record can only credit a document a reader can be pointed to, so a document we may not cite cannot earn a mark or a point. If part of a document may not be quoted, say so in the message before we read it.
• A link to the exact file on your own site or store is preferred over an attachment. It is what we cite, and it stays current when you revise it.
• Send only what the record needs. Your email address, name, phone number and any other personal or internal detail in the thread are used to reply to you and are never published; the privacy page says how correspondence is kept.

What happens to it

Submissions are read by the Best Spray Foam research desk. Each one ends in one of four states, and where the message includes a way to reply we write back to say which:

• Received. The message has arrived and is queued against the record it names.
• In review. We are reading the document against the record, which for a test report or a data sheet means checking the standard, the thickness, the configuration, the date and the product it names.
• Updated. The facts, documents and open questions on the affected pages change, the read date is printed, and where the document contradicts something we published the correction note says so. A document that answers an open question closes it; one that raises a new question adds it.
• No change, with the reason. The document does not cover the product, size or claim in question, repeats a claim without the result behind it, or says what the record already says. The reply names which.

We do not publish a response time. Reports that a page describes a safety-related figure wrongly are read first.

What we publish from a submission

The document's title, date and revision, the claim it supports, short quotations where the wording is the point, and a link to the file where it is public. Nothing else from the thread is published: not the sender's name, address or contact details, not the correspondence, and not any passage you told us before sending may not be quoted.

What it cannot do

The channel

Submissions are taken by email, at research@beestsprayfoam.com. Put the product and the page in the subject line so we can find the record you mean; every product page carries a link that fills that in for you. Email is the only channel for a document. The question form on the questions pages takes a reader’s question, has no attachment field, and is not read as a submission; we do not accept documents through marketplace messaging either, because the thread is the record of what was sent and when, and it leaves you a copy.

Public documents already on your own store or site do not need to be sent; a link to the exact file is enough, and it is what we prefer to cite.