Barn spray foam insulation in Hinton is work on a building that is occupied for far more of the year than a barn on the plain, because at this elevation animals come in early and go out late, and everything that happens inside a barn happens for months rather than weeks.
A moisture load that runs for two thirds of the year
Animals give off a great deal of water and they do it continuously. In a barn used for part of the winter that load arrives, and then the building gets a stretch of milder weather to clear it. Here it does not. The same load runs from autumn to spring against surfaces that stay cold throughout, so the frost on the underside of a roof, the damp in the bedding and the condensation on the walls are not events. They are the building's normal condition, and they accumulate.
Warmer is not the goal and it makes it worse
The instinct is to close the barn up and heat it, and on a building holding animals that is the wrong direction. Warm air holds more moisture, a sealed barn has nowhere to put it, and the result is wetter bedding, poorer air and more condensation than before. What a Hinton barn wants is a roof with no cold surface under it and ventilation that is designed to run through the season, and those two together do far more for the animals than any amount of heat.
The roof is the surface, and the walls are usually not
On a metal-clad barn with nothing on the underside of the roof, the warm moist air rises, meets the cold sheeting and comes back down onto the animals, the bedding and the feed. That is one surface and it accounts for most of what is wrong in these buildings. Treating it removes the cold plane the moisture is finding, and it is the only insulation work a great many Hinton barns genuinely need.
Cold arrives at the height the animals actually live at
Air comes in low. The gap under a door, the joint where the wall panel meets the ground and the place where the concrete curb has cracked all admit it at ground level, which is exactly the level a lying animal occupies. Heat meanwhile is up under the roof where nothing is using it. That vertical split is worse here than in a shorter winter simply because it runs longer, and it means the cheap work at the base of the walls does more for the animals than anything spent higher up the building.
Barn Spray Foam Insulation Hinton: Common Questions
Should we heat the barn? No. Warm air holds more moisture and a sealed barn has nowhere to put it. It gets worse, not better.
Why is everything damp by February? That is a load that has been running since October against surfaces that never warmed up.
Where does the work go? The underside of the roof, and the base of the walls where the cold gets in low. Rarely the middle.
Size the assembly with the R-value calculator, then get a free Hinton quote. More on Barn Spray Foam Insulation Alberta.