Cottage spray foam insulation in Stony Plain is work on the small seasonal buildings that turn up on county properties: a guest cabin, a studio, a bunkhouse, or an old dwelling somebody lived in before the current house was built. What they have in common is that nobody heats them for most of the year, so insulation depth is doing very little and the air moving through the shell is doing everything, carrying moisture in and leaving it wherever the temperature suits.
The house that was there before the house
This is the version peculiar to a county settled this long ago. A good number of these properties have an original small dwelling still standing, superseded decades ago by something larger, and now used a few weeks a year or as a guest space. It is a house rather than a cabin: a real foundation of some sort, plaster or board inside, a chimney, and the assemblies of whatever decade it was built in. Treating it as a simple shell is the commonest mistake, because it has all the complications of an old house and none of the heating that kept one dry.
The chimney is an open hole in a building nobody heats
Almost every one of these old dwellings has a chimney, and on a building that has not been heated in thirty years it is usually still open at both ends. That is a permanent vertical air path from the lowest point of the building to above the roof, driven by whatever temperature difference exists, running continuously through every month the place is shut. It moves far more air than any gap in the walls and it is invisible because a bricked-up hearth or a stove that was removed leaves nothing to look at from inside. Establishing whether the flue is open, and capping or sealing it properly if the appliance has gone, is frequently the single largest improvement available on a Stony Plain building of this kind and it costs almost nothing.
What is underneath, on a building of that age
The foundations under these are frequently the oldest thing on the property: stone, a shallow pour, piers, or in some cases nothing much at all. That decides more than the walls do, because a building sitting on open ground has a continuous moisture source under it that no amount of work above will overcome. On a Stony Plain property the first thing looked at is what the building stands on and what the ground does with the melt, and where that is unresolved the ground cover comes before any insulation.
Deciding what the building is going to be used for
Between a store, a guest space somebody sleeps in, and a studio somebody works in through the winter, there are three quite different specifications, and households frequently have not chosen. It is worth settling because the answer changes not only the depth but the requirements the building has to meet and what has to cover the foam. A building insulated for one use and then wanted for another within a year is the outcome that costs the most, and it is entirely avoidable with one conversation at the start.
Cottage Spray Foam Insulation Stony Plain: Common Questions
What about the old house from the original yard? That is common here, and it is a house rather than a cabin. It has all of an old house's issues.
Why does it smell when we open it in spring? Air moved through it all winter and left moisture behind. That is what sealing addresses.
Should we insulate it deeply? Only if it will be heated. If it is closed and cold, sealing matters far more than depth.
Size the assembly with the R-value calculator, then get a free Stony Plain quote. More on Cottage Spray Foam Insulation Alberta.