Cottage spray foam insulation in Strathmore is work on seasonal buildings on the land around the town, and the condition they are fighting is absence rather than cold: nobody heats them for most of the year, so depth does very little and the air moving through the shell does everything, carrying moisture in and leaving it wherever the temperature suits.
A building nobody drives out to in winter
That is the version peculiar to this area. A seasonal building on a lake lot gets looked at occasionally because somebody is passing. A guest cabin or an old dwelling on a quarter east of Strathmore does not, because getting to it in February is a deliberate trip on roads that may not be worth driving. So whatever the building does over a winter, it does completely unobserved, and the first anybody knows is when the door opens in spring.
Wind on a small building with nothing upwind
An unheated building on open ground is not passively cold, it is being flushed. Pressure on one side pushes air straight through the structure and out the other, continuously, at whatever temperature it is outside. In a building that is heated that shows up as a bill. In one that is not, it shows up as everything inside sitting at outside temperature and humidity, cycling with the weather, all winter. Sealing changes that completely and depth barely touches it.
The mouse question, which is real on a building left empty
It should be said plainly because everybody asks. A building standing empty from autumn to spring on open ground is exactly what small animals are looking for, and the gaps that let air in are the same gaps that let them in. A properly sealed shell has far fewer of those than a building with a loose board and an open soffit, which is a genuine benefit. What it will not do is remove anything already living in the structure, so anywhere with an established problem gets dealt with before the building is closed up rather than after.
What it costs to keep a building nobody is using
There is a question underneath all of this that nobody asks out loud, and on a property with several structures it is the useful one. A seasonal building that is genuinely used a few weeks a year is worth keeping and worth sealing. One that is kept because taking it down is work, and has not had anybody in it for three years, is costing a roof, a set of decisions and eventually a repair bill for no return. On a quarter east of Strathmore where there is more than one of these, the honest advice is sometimes to pick the one that gets used, do that properly, and stop maintaining the others as though they were coming back into service.
Cottage Spray Foam Insulation Strathmore: Common Questions
What if we do not go out there in winter? Then whatever it does, it does unobserved, and sealing matters far more than depth.
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.
Will it keep mice out? It closes most of the ways in. Anything already living in the structure is dealt with first.
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