Most refrigerated space around Fort McMurray exists to feed people - camp kitchens, catering operations, site food service and the regional distribution that supplies them. Cold storage spray foam insulation in Fort McMurray is working in the coldest sustained conditions in the province, and that produces a problem the rest of Alberta rarely sees.
The winter when outside is colder than the freezer
For weeks at a time here, the outdoor temperature is below the inside of a walk-in cooler and can approach the inside of a freezer. The temperature difference across the wall collapses, and in a cooler it inverts: the warm side becomes the outside. Any assembly whose vapour control was placed on the assumption that the inside is always the cold side is, for that period, built backwards. A continuous closed cell layer behaves the same in both directions, which is why it is used here.
Kitchens make the load worse
A camp kitchen is a high-humidity space attached directly to refrigerated rooms. Steam, washdown and constant door traffic put a moisture load on partitions that a distribution building never sees. The wall between a working kitchen and a walk-in is one of the hardest surfaces in any building in this region, and it is usually a stud wall with a sheet in it.
Modular and relocated buildings
A great deal of the built stock here arrived on a truck. Modular kitchens, reefer conversions and relocated units have joints at every module line, and those joints are where the envelope is weakest. Foam applied over the assembled building rather than to each module is what makes the seams stop being seams.
Shutdown windows and doing it once
Camp and site work runs to schedules that are not negotiable, and access is often confined to a defined window. That makes the sequencing part of the job rather than an afterthought: the shell repaired, dried and prepared before spraying starts, so that the work finishes inside the window it was given.
The vapour drive can run the other way
Where the outside is colder than the space being kept cold, moisture moves from inside outward rather than inward, which is the reverse of the usual assumption. The assembly has to be designed for the direction that actually applies for most of the year here.
Cold Storage Spray Foam Insulation Fort McMurray: Common Questions
What happens when it is colder outside than inside the cooler? The drive reverses. For that period the warm side of the assembly is the outside, and a building detailed for one direction only is working against itself.
Why are camp kitchens hard on the envelope? They are humid, washed down and attached straight to refrigerated rooms, so the partition carries a heavy moisture load continuously rather than occasionally.
Do modular buildings need a different approach? They need the module joints treated as part of the envelope. Applying foam across the assembled building is what stops each seam being an independent weak point.
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