Agricultural spray foam insulation in Sundre is work on yards that mostly keep horses. West of town the land runs up against the forest reserve, and the operations on it are outfitting strings, trail and pack horses, rodeo stock, saddle horses and the hay that feeds all of them. That is a different agricultural yard from a grain yard, and it asks a different question of its buildings.
A yard where the animals leave and come back
On a grain operation the buildings hold things that stay put. On a horse yard here the animals go out, sometimes for days at a time, and return wet. A string that has been working in timber comes back with water in the hair, water in the blankets, water in the saddle pads and mud to the knee. All of that arrives inside a building at once and has to go somewhere. The yard needs a space where wet gear can give up its water into air that is moving, and it needs that space to be separate from where the dry goods live.
Tack, leather and feed are the moisture-sensitive load
Nobody insulates a horse yard to keep horses warm. A horse in condition is better off in a shelter that is dry and out of the wind than in one that is warm. What actually suffers from a poor building here is everything that is not the animal. Leather takes up moisture and grows mould on it. Blankets that never dry carry it into the next use. Grain and pelleted feed cake and spoil. Vitamins and medicines lose their value. Those items share one requirement, which is a surface that does not go below the dew point of the air around them, and that is an envelope question rather than a heating question.
The tack and feed room is the building worth doing first
On most yards here the correct first job is not the shelter at all. It is the small closed room inside a larger cold building where the tack, the feed and the vet supplies are kept. Sprayed closed-cell on the walls and the underside of the deck of that one room makes a continuous skin with no gaps for air to track through, and at roughly R-6 to R-7 per inch it reaches a useful depth in a shallow space. Past about two inches it is also a vapour barrier, so warm air from a small heater cannot reach a cold steel sheet behind it and leave water there.
Hay, and the building you put it over
Hay wants cover and air, not a sealed room. A tight building over hay that went up at any moisture at all is a way to make the problem worse, because the moisture the bales give off has nowhere to leave. If a building is going to hold hay and nothing else, the job is the roof deck and the ventilation, and we would rather say that than sell a wall spray nobody needs.
Water lines on a yard off the main
Out here the water is a well and a pressure system, and the pipe runs through buildings that are not heated. Closed-cell applied around the line and to the inside of the wall it runs against is the standard fix, because it keeps the pipe inside the warm side of the assembly instead of trying to warm the whole volume. Tell us where the line runs before we quote, not after.
Agricultural Spray Foam Insulation Sundre: Common Questions
Do the horses need a warm barn? No. Dry, draught-free and ventilated beats warm every time. What needs the sealed room is the tack, the feed and the medicine.
Why does my tack grow mould in a cold building? Because the air inside carries moisture off wet gear and animals and the surfaces are cold enough to condense it. Sealing and insulating the room raises those surface temperatures.
Should we insulate the hay shed? Usually only the roof deck, to stop condensation dripping onto bales. Hay needs air movement, so making that building tight is the wrong direction.
How much does agricultural spray foam insulation cost in Sundre? It is priced by the sprayed area and the depth the assembly needs, so a small tack and feed room is a small job and a whole shelter is not. Travel out past the pavement is a real part of the scope and we will say so on the quote.
How do I choose an agricultural spray foam contractor in Sundre? Ask which buildings on your yard they would leave alone. On a horse operation a contractor who wants to spray everything has not understood what is actually being damaged.
Size the job with the R-value calculator, then get a free Sundre quote. More on Agricultural Spray Foam Insulation Alberta province-wide.