Pole barn spray foam insulation in Drayton Valley is work on post-frame buildings, which is most of what has been built on the farms and acreages around Brazeau County in the last few decades. They go up fast on cleared ground without a foundation, which is exactly why they are everywhere out here, and the way they are framed decides how they can be insulated.
Post frame has no continuous wall plane
In a stud wall, the structure and the insulation layer are the same thing: consistent cavities at a regular spacing, ready to be filled. A post-frame wall is columns at wide spacing with horizontal girts between them, and the girts are often set flat on the outside face of the posts. So the inside face of the wall is not a plane at all. It is a series of recesses, offsets and projections, with the steel cladding attached to the outside of the girts. There is no cavity of a standard depth to fill, and anything cut to size has to be cut to a different size at every bay.
That is the reason foam suits this building
Closed-cell foam is applied as a liquid and sticks to what it lands on, so it follows the inside face of the cladding, wraps over and around the girts, and carries up the face of the posts in a continuous layer. There is no cutting, no fitting and no gap at a changing dimension. At about R-6 to R-7 per inch it puts useful R-value into a shallow depth, and at roughly two inches it becomes the vapour barrier itself, which saves detailing a poly sheet around every girt and post in the building. In a post-frame building that detailing is the job, and it is the part that gets skipped.
The skirt board, the grade and the frozen ground
A post-frame building sits on its posts with a skirt board at the bottom of the wall and the grade right up against it. Frost here drives deep and stays down for months, so that board and the bottom of the wall are in contact with frozen ground for a long stretch. It is the coldest line in the building and it is also the one place where the cladding, the framing and the ground all meet, so it is where air gets in. Sealing the bottom of the wall properly, and dealing with the gap between the skirt and the first girt, does more per dollar than depth anywhere else on these buildings.
Wide bays mean long unbroken air paths
Because the girts run horizontally across wide bays, a gap anywhere in the wall connects along the full length of it. Air that gets in at the skirt can travel sideways behind an uninsulated or batt-filled wall and emerge at the far end of the building, which is why cold spots in a pole barn are so often nowhere near the leak. A bonded, continuous layer removes the path rather than relocating the symptom.
What the building is going to be used for
On a cleared-bush farm these buildings do everything: equipment storage, a shop bay, hay, a calving area, a small cold store. The specification depends on which of those it is, and a building doing two of them wants an insulated divide in the middle rather than a uniform treatment end to end. Tell us what each end is for and we will quote it that way.
Who you are dealing with
We are the contractor on pole barn spray foam insulation Drayton Valley, not a referral service. We quote the job, schedule it and stand behind it, and our own installers carry it out.
Pole Barn Spray Foam Insulation Drayton Valley: Common Questions
Can a post-frame wall be insulated with batt? It can be framed out to accept batt, which means adding framing between the girts first. That is extra work and it still leaves the girts and posts bridging through, which is why foam applied directly is the usual answer.
Why is the cold spot at the other end of the building from the gap? Because the horizontal girts let air travel sideways behind the cladding. It enters at one point and comes out wherever it finds a way into the room.
Where does the money do the most good on a pole barn? The bottom of the wall, where the skirt meets the ground, and the junction up at the eave. Those are the two lines that leak on nearly every one of these buildings.
How much does pole barn spray foam insulation cost in Drayton Valley? It is priced per board foot over the actual surface sprayed, and on a post-frame wall that surface is larger than the flat dimensions suggest because the foam wraps the girts and posts. Splitting the building into a conditioned end and a cold end is usually how the scope gets set.
How do I get a pole barn spray foam insulation quote in Drayton Valley? Tell us what the building is used for at each end and whether it will be heated, and we will look at the skirt, the girts and the eave. We quote it, schedule it and stand behind the work.
Size the assembly with the R-value calculator, then get a free Drayton Valley quote. More on Pole Barn Spray Foam Insulation Alberta province-wide.