Shipping container spray foam insulation in Vegreville is nearly all farm and yard work: a container bought as secure storage for tools, chemical, parts or records, sitting out in the open on a yard with nothing around it. It is the most thermally hostile building anybody owns, and the reason is simple. It is a sealed steel box with no thermal mass and no cavity, standing in the weather on all six sides.
A container tracks the air temperature almost instantly
A house takes hours to respond to a change outside. A container takes minutes. The steel is thin, it is highly conductive, and there is nothing in the assembly to slow anything down, so the inside of an uninsulated container is at outdoor temperature nearly all the time and then well above it in summer sun. On an open yard in this district, with wind moving across every face and no shelter, that response gets even faster, because the wind strips heat off the outside of the box as quickly as the steel can conduct it.
Container rain is not a leak
Warm moist air gets into the box whenever the doors are open. The steel then cools below the dew point, usually overnight, and the moisture condenses on the ceiling and the walls and runs or drips down onto whatever is inside. People find water on their stored goods and look for a hole in the roof. There is no hole. The container is condensing on itself, and in a climate where the cold holds for months without a thaw it does it over and over through the whole winter.
Foam is the only practical layer in a container
The interior of a container is corrugated steel with structural ribs, and nothing flat fits it. Batt has nothing to sit in. Rigid board can only touch the high points of the corrugation, which leaves a continuous air space behind the board against cold steel, and that space is where the condensation then happens where nobody can see it. Closed-cell foam is sprayed directly onto the corrugation, follows every rib, bonds to the steel and becomes a vapour barrier at about two inches, so there is no air gap and no cold surface available for moisture to find. At roughly R-6 to R-7 per inch it also gets a worthwhile R-value into a box where every inch of interior width is valuable.
The floor and the doors
Two things routinely get left out. The floor of a container is usually a heavy timber deck on steel cross members, sitting a few inches above the ground, and in a deep-frost climate it is a cold plane you are standing on or storing on. It can be insulated from underneath if the container is blocked up high enough, and that should be decided before it is set down rather than afterwards. The doors are the other, with seals that are frequently hardened or damaged on a used unit, and a container with perfect walls and bad door seals is still a box that breathes.
If it is becoming a shop or a workspace
A container used as a heated workspace brings two further requirements. Foam is combustible and needs a covering over it in an occupied space, and what your situation requires is determined by the authority that inspects it rather than by us. And a sealed box with any combustion appliance in it needs deliberate make-up air, because a container is tight enough after spraying that it genuinely matters.
One company, start to finish
Nobody gets handed your shipping container spray foam insulation Vegreville job. We quote the job, schedule it and stand behind it, and our crews are the ones who show up.
Shipping Container Spray Foam Insulation Vegreville: Common Questions
Why is there water inside when the roof is sound? Because the box is condensing its own humid air on cold steel. It is a dew point problem, not a leak.
Can rigid board be glued to the inside instead? It only touches the high points of the corrugation, which leaves an air space against the cold steel. That is where the condensation goes instead.
Does the floor need doing? If the container is blocked up high enough to work underneath, it is worth it. On a deep-frost site it is a cold plane right under the contents.
How much does shipping container spray foam insulation cost in Vegreville? It is priced per board foot over the sprayed interior, so the number follows the developed area of walls, ceiling and any floor, and the thickness chosen. A used container may carry a line for cleaning the steel so the foam can bond.
How do I choose a shipping container spray foam contractor in Vegreville? Ask how they handle the corrugation and the door seals. Anyone proposing a flat layer against a ribbed wall has not insulated a container before.
Size the thickness with the R-value calculator, then get a free Vegreville quote. More on Shipping Container Spray Foam Insulation Alberta province-wide.