A heated quonset does something to snow that a cold one does not, and it is worth understanding before spending money on the roof. Quonset spray foam insulation in Peace River is often bought after a winter of ice building along the bottom of the arch, and the cause is not the weather being unusual. It is the building leaking heat into the snow sitting on it.
An uninsulated heated arch melts its own snow
Heat escaping through bare steel warms the underside of the snow lying on the curve. That meltwater runs down the arch and reaches the lower part of the curve, which is furthest from the heat and closest to the outside temperature, and it refreezes there. Do that repeatedly through a long northern winter and you build a ridge of ice around the base of the building, hanging off an edge that was never designed to carry it.
The fix is to stop the heat reaching the snow
Insulating the inside face of the arch keeps the heat in the building instead of in the snowpack. The snow then behaves the way snow on a cold roof behaves: it sits, and it slides or it blows off, rather than melting and re-freezing in a cycle the building pays for. That is a different mechanism from simply reducing a heating bill, and on an arch in this climate it is frequently the more valuable of the two.
Load is not something to guess at
Ice weighs considerably more than the snow it came from, and it accumulates where nobody planned for it. If a building has already been carrying ice for several seasons, that is a structural question worth asking of somebody qualified to answer it, separately from the insulation work. We will raise it and we will not pretend to settle it.
One trip, one building, done properly
The distance up here makes a single mobilisation the sensible way to work. If there is a quonset and other buildings on the same yard, planning them together rather than one visit at a time is a genuine saving, and it is worth deciding before anything is booked.
Why nothing but foam suits the shape
There are no stud bays and no flat planes on an arch. Batt has nothing to sit in and board cannot lie flat against a curve without leaving voids behind it, and a void against cold steel is exactly where water collects. Foam bonds to the shell and follows the curve, so there is no cavity to condense in. It has to go onto clean dry steel, and any active rust has to be dealt with rather than sealed under it.
Quonset Spray Foam Insulation Peace River: Common Questions
Why does ice build along the bottom of my quonset? Heat escaping through the steel melts the snow above it, the water runs down the curve and refreezes at the cold lower edge. Insulating the arch stops the melting.
Will insulating make the snow slide off? It stops the building melting it from underneath. The snow then behaves as it does on any cold roof rather than turning into ice at the bottom of the arch.
Should other buildings be done at the same time? At the distance to Peace River, yes if they are on the list anyway. Travel and set-up are a real share of a single-building job up here.
Estimate the thickness with the R-value calculator, then get a free Peace River quote. More on Quonset Spray Foam Insulation Alberta province-wide.