A colony town was laid out on the assumption that a family on a town lot kept animals, so barns here stand inside the grid and not only out on the section lines. Barn spray foam insulation in Raymond is often a two-storey timber barn at the lane end of a deep residential lot, built square to the survey, now holding 4-H animals, a couple of horses, hay and a great deal of stored equipment. That setting changes the job in two concrete ways.
The loft floor is the ceiling, and it is planks
The classic barn of this type has stalls below and a hay loft above, with a floor of planks laid across heavy joists. That plank floor is the top of the space you are trying to make usable, and it leaks everything. The boards have shrunk apart, there are gaps at the ends where they meet the wall plate, and there are openings cut through for dropping feed. Heat from below goes straight up into the loft and keeps going, and dust and chaff come back down. Treating the underside of the loft floor as the ceiling plane, sprayed continuous across the joists and into the perimeter where the floor meets the wall, is what turns the lower level into a closed box. Insulating the roof above the loft instead means heating a volume nothing is using.
A barn inside a residential grid is a neighbour question
On a section this would not come up. On a town lot it does. Once the lower level is sealed it has to be ventilated deliberately, and the air you move out has to go somewhere. A fan put on the nearest wall because that is where the power is can end up discharging across a property line, at head height, into somebody's back yard. Deciding the discharge point before the sealing is done is far easier than moving a fan afterwards, and it is the part of the job people only think about once the building is working properly and finally smells like a barn in one concentrated stream rather than diffusely everywhere.
Heavy timber, rough sawn, nothing on a module
These barns were framed from true-dimension lumber at whatever spacing suited the span, braced diagonally, and sheathed in boards. There is no stud bay at a consistent width anywhere in the building. Batt products have to be cut individually and still leave edge gaps, and rigid board has to be scribed around braces. Sprayed foam is adhered to the surface it hits and seals around a brace, a notch and a mortise without a cut, which is why it is the practical choice on framing that was never dimensioned for a manufactured product.
The moisture is produced inside
It is worth saying plainly because the climate here misleads people. Southern Alberta air is dry, so the assumption is that condensation is a wet-coast problem. The water in a barn comes from the animals themselves, from bedding and from any wash-down. Cold outdoor air makes the inside face of the cladding colder, and colder cladding condenses the indoor moisture more readily, not less. A dry climate makes a barn's condensation worse rather than better, and closed-cell foam sprayed directly to the underside of the deck removes the cold surface the water was forming on.
Scope it to a room
Very few of these buildings should be insulated entirely. Pick the part that has a use that justifies it, close that part off with a real partition, and treat it as a small building inside a large one. The rest of the barn stays what it is, which is dry storage with good natural airflow.
Barn Spray Foam Insulation Raymond: Common Questions
Should we insulate the roof or the loft floor? The loft floor, in almost every case, if the loft itself is not being used. The floor is the boundary of the space you actually want to condition.
It is dry here. Do we still get condensation in a barn? Yes, and more so in cold dry weather. The moisture comes from the animals and the bedding, and cold cladding is what it condenses on.
Will sealing it cause an air quality problem? It would if you sealed it and left it at that. Sealing is paired with planned ventilation, and on a town lot the discharge point matters to the people next door.
How much does barn spray foam insulation cost in Raymond? It follows the sprayed area and the thickness, so scoping it to one room rather than the whole barn is the main control you have. A plank loft floor needs continuous coverage, which is area you should expect to be in the number.
How do I choose a barn spray foam contractor in Raymond? Ask where they would put the boundary of the insulated space, and where the air is going to leave. Both answers should be specific to your building.
Size the assembly with the R-value calculator, then get a free Raymond quote. More on Barn Spray Foam Insulation Alberta province-wide.