Pole barn spray foam insulation in High River is sprayed across the inside of a post-frame building, over the posts, girts and cladding together, because there is no cavity and anything held against the girts sags and stops working once air moves behind it. On a yard in this district the thing to establish first is what the ground is doing to the posts.
Posts standing in ground that moves
A post-frame building on a High River yard transfers everything through timbers set into the soil, and in this district that soil goes through repeated wetting and drying and a great deal of freeze-thaw. Over years that moves posts, and a frame that has moved is a frame whose cladding no longer lies flat, whose laps have opened, and whose door no longer sits square in its opening. That is worth looking at before anything else, because an adhered layer needs a shell that is not still shifting under it.
What a building on a slope is actually dealing with
Where one of these sits below higher ground, the water coming off that ground arrives at the base of the wall and stays there. The posts on the uphill side are the ones that suffer, the closure at the bottom of the cladding on that face is where the trouble starts, and the inside of the sheet on that wall is where the surface will be worst prepared for anything sprayed onto it. It is one elevation rather than a building-wide problem, which makes it cheaper to deal with than owners expect.
A layer sprayed across a frame that is still moving
This is the consequence of the first section and it is the reason it comes first. A sprayed layer goes across the posts, the girts and the sheet as one continuous surface, which is exactly what makes it work on a post-frame building. It also means the layer is bridging between members that are fixed to posts set in the ground, so if those posts are still moving seasonally the layer is being flexed at every girt line. Foam tolerates a great deal, and it does not tolerate being worked in the same place indefinitely. Where a High River building is still settling, the honest sequence is to deal with the posts first and spray afterwards, even though that means waiting a season.
Where the doors face, on ground with fall in it
Post-frame buildings on these yards were sited for how equipment moves through them rather than for the weather, so the big door frequently faces downhill or across the slope because that is where the approach is. That puts the largest opening in the building on the side the wind comes down and, on a wet spring, on the side the water arrives from. It is not a fault and it is rarely worth changing. It does mean the door surround, the threshold and the ground immediately outside that elevation are where the work concentrates, and it is a much smaller scope than treating the shell.
Pole Barn Spray Foam Insulation High River: Common Questions
What does it mean when the door has stopped sitting square? That is the frame moving, and it gets dealt with before anything is sprayed onto the cladding.
Why is one wall always worse than the others? Usually the uphill one. Water arrives at its base and stays there.
Why is preparation its own line? Decades of dust on the cladding. Foam will not bond to it and it has to come off first.
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