There is a sea can on nearly every service yard and a good share of the acreages around Fox Creek. They are cheap, they are secure, they arrive on a truck and they need no foundation, so they end up as tool cribs, chemical stores, parts rooms, dry shacks and occasionally offices. Shipping container spray foam insulation here is usually a request to make one of those uses actually work through a northern winter.
A container is a single piece of cold steel
This is the thing that makes a container different from a small building. The walls, roof, floor frame and doors are all welded into one continuous steel structure, so there is no break anywhere in it. Whatever the outside temperature is, the inside surface is effectively the same, and there is no cavity, no framing and no thermal break to work with. Insulate the walls and leave the door frame and the corner posts bare and the cold simply arrives through the steel instead.
Condensation in a container is severe, not incidental
Because the entire interior surface is at outdoor temperature, any moisture in the air inside a sea can has an unlimited cold surface to condense on. In this climate that means frost forming on the ceiling and walls through a cold spell and then running down onto everything when the sun hits the box. Containers used as tool cribs rust their contents for exactly this reason, and it is routinely blamed on a leaking roof. The roof is fine. The box is raining on itself.
Why foam is the only practical answer
Framing a container out and filling it with batt loses a great deal of interior width in a space that has very little to give, and it leaves an air gap against the steel where the condensation then happens out of sight. Sprayed closed-cell goes directly onto the corrugated steel, adheres to it, follows the ribs, and removes the cold surface rather than covering it. At roughly R-6 to R-7 per inch it achieves something useful in a couple of inches, which is the only thickness a container can afford to give up.
The parts people leave out
Three of them, consistently. The doors, which are a large area of bare steel and are also where the seals are, so a container that has been insulated and still runs cold usually has untreated doors. The floor, which is a steel frame with a timber deck on it sitting directly over ground or blocks, and which in this climate is the coldest surface in the box. And the corner castings and posts, which are heavy steel and conduct hard. A container job that covers the walls and ceiling only is about half a job.
Siting it so the work lasts
A container set straight on the ground will sit in meltwater and the underside will corrode, and in boreal muskeg it will also move with frost. Blocked up clear of the ground with a drainage path under it, the floor can be insulated from beneath and the box stays dry. That is worth sorting out before the insulation goes in, because the insulation will not survive a box that is rotting from underneath.
Who quotes it and who sprays it
On shipping container spray foam insulation Fox Creek, the people who quote the work are the people who do it. We insulate it ourselves and we answer for the result.
Shipping Container Spray Foam Insulation Fox Creek: Common Questions
Why does a container condense so badly? Every interior surface is bare steel at outdoor temperature, so there is an unlimited cold surface for moisture to form on.
Can it be framed and insulated with batt instead? It can, but it costs interior width a container does not have and it leaves an air space against the steel where condensation happens unseen.
Do the doors need insulating? Yes. They are a large area of bare steel and a container with untreated doors will still run cold.
How much does shipping container spray foam insulation cost in Fox Creek? It follows the internal surface area and the depth, and whether the floor and the doors are included is the decision that changes the number most.
How do I choose a shipping container spray foam contractor in Fox Creek? Ask whether the floor, the doors and the corner posts are in the quote, and how the container is being supported off the ground. Those answers describe a complete job.
Size the assembly with the R-value calculator, then get a free Fox Creek quote. More on Shipping Container Spray Foam Insulation Alberta province-wide.