A poultry building is the most chemically aggressive environment on a mixed farm, and that is the lens worth using on it. Poultry barn spray foam insulation in Innisfail is as much about what the inside air does to the building as about what the outside temperature does to the birds.
Litter moisture and what it turns into
Birds put a large amount of water into the air relative to their size, and the litter beneath them holds and releases more. As that litter breaks down it produces ammonia, which dissolves readily in water. So the air in a working poultry building is warm, very humid, and carrying a dissolved alkali. Wherever that air touches a surface cold enough to condense on, what forms is not clean water. It is a film that attacks galvanising, eats at fastener heads, and degrades any organic material it sits on. A barn that looks fine when empty and deteriorates year by year is doing it in the weeks the birds are in.
The coldest surface is the one that corrodes
Corrosion in these buildings tracks the temperature map almost exactly. The underside of the roof steel, the fastener ends, the purlin flanges and the junction where the ceiling meets the wall are where the condensate forms, and they are where the metal fails first. The remedy is not a coating over cold steel, because the condensate will form under it at the first flaw. The remedy is to stop the surface from being cold. Closed-cell foam adhered directly to the inside face raises that surface temperature above the dew point, and where there is no condensation there is no electrolyte and the corrosion stops.
Why the ceiling plane carries the building
Warm humid air collects at the top. In a building with an open truss space and a fibrous ceiling, that air passes into the truss space, condenses on the cold roof deck, and then drips back down onto the insulation, the birds and the litter. The litter gets wetter, which produces more ammonia, which makes the next cycle worse. Building a continuous sealed ceiling plane breaks that loop, and in a parkland winter with repeated swings through zero the loop runs many times a season rather than once.
Ventilation stays the owner's call
Sealing the shell does not reduce the amount of air a flock needs. It changes where that air comes in and goes out, from wherever the building happens to leak to wherever it has been designed to move. That is an improvement in control, not a reduction in requirement, and the ventilation design belongs with whoever manages the flock. What we can say is that a leaking building cannot be ventilated accurately, because every fan is fighting the shell as well as moving air.
Summer is the other half of the problem
The same foam layer that keeps a surface above the dew point in January keeps solar gain off the birds in July. A bare steel roof over a flock on a hot afternoon radiates heat downward, and in this part of the province the summer peaks are high enough to matter. It is worth specifying the roof assembly for both seasons rather than only the one that prompted the call.
The crew on your job
For poultry barn spray foam insulation Innisfail, we quote and manage the whole job and our own installers do the work. The free quote comes from the people who will be on site.
Poultry Barn Spray Foam Insulation Innisfail: Common Questions
Why is the steel corroding from the inside? Because the condensate forming on cold interior surfaces carries dissolved ammonia from the litter. It is a chemically active film rather than clean water.
Would painting the roof steel help? Not durably. The condensate forms on the cold surface, including under any coating once it has a flaw, so the fix is to stop the surface from being cold.
Does sealing the barn mean less ventilation? No. The flock needs the same air. Sealing means that air moves where it was designed to rather than through whatever gaps the building has.
How much does poultry barn spray foam insulation cost in Innisfail? It is priced per board foot of sprayed area at the specified thickness, so the number follows the ceiling and wall area and the target R-value. Cleaning down to a surface foam will bond to is a real part of the scope in a working barn.
How do I choose a poultry barn spray foam contractor in Innisfail? Ask how they intend to prepare the surfaces and when in your cycle they would do the work. A barn can only be sprayed properly when it is empty and clean, and the scheduling is part of the answer.
Size the assembly with the R-value calculator, then get a free Innisfail quote. More on Poultry Barn Spray Foam Insulation Alberta province-wide.