Metal building spray foam insulation in Edson is sprayed onto the inside face of the cladding, covering the girts and the sheet as one surface. The complaint that starts most of these conversations in this town is not that the building is cold. It is that it is wet inside on a day when it has not rained.
Water running down the inside of the wall
Warm damp air inside a building meets a steel sheet that is at outside temperature, and the moisture in that air condenses on the metal and runs. On a cold morning an uninsulated Edson shop can have water tracking down the inside of the wall and dripping from the underside of the roof onto whatever is below. Owners frequently look for a leak first and find nothing, because the water is not coming through the building, it is being made inside it.
Why the girts show as wet stripes
Look at a wall that has some insulation in it and the pattern gives the mechanism away. The bays are dry and the lines where the girts and columns run are wet, because the steel frame carries cold straight through whatever sits between it. That grid is a large share of the wall on a heavier building, and it is the reason insulation fitted between the frame keeps disappointing. Foam sprayed across the whole inside face covers the frame and the cavity together, which is what actually interrupts the path.
Machines that arrive covered in snow
The moisture has to come from somewhere, and in this town a great deal of it is driven in. Equipment, trucks and machinery come into these buildings carrying snow packed into every recess, and it all melts and evaporates into the air of the building. Add washing, and any process that uses water, and an Edson shop can be putting a serious amount of moisture into its own air every day. Sealing the shell is half the answer and planned ventilation is the other half, and neither works properly on its own.
Buildings that serve the bush and the gas field
The stock here reflects what the town does. Steel buildings housing logging equipment, service rigs, welding and fabrication shops, and yards that maintain machinery working out of town. They tend to be tall, they tend to have large doors that spend part of the day open, and the original envelope was usually a blanket system that has since sagged off the purlins or been torn where somebody ran services through it. That material comes out before anything is sprayed, and it is a real line in the quote rather than a rounding error.
Metal Building Spray Foam Insulation Edson: The Covering Requirement
Where people work in the building, the foam does not stay exposed. A metal building in Edson that is occupied needs a thermal barrier over the foam, either a sprayed coating or a lining, and where there is welding or other hot work the clearances get settled at the same time. It goes in the quote at the start.
Metal Building Spray Foam Insulation Edson: Common Questions
We have water inside and no leak. What is it? Condensation on the steel. It is made inside the building rather than coming through it.
Why is the insulation we have not working? If it sits between the frame, the frame is still carrying cold straight through. That is the wet stripe pattern.
Do we need ventilation as well? Yes. Sealing without a plan for the moisture being brought in only moves the problem.
Size the assembly with the R-value calculator, then get a free Edson quote. More on Metal Building Spray Foam Insulation Alberta.