Spray foam insulation in Three Hills

Three Hills is a small central Alberta town surrounded by grain and mixed farming. About 66% of dwellings here were built before 1991.

Larger older buildings

Small prairie towns tend to hold a few buildings much larger than their housing - halls, schools, churches, arenas and other community-scale structures, often built decades ago and heated on budgets that were set long before energy cost what it does now.

These have a different problem from houses, and the same fix usually applies for a different reason.

Volume works against you. A hall has far more heated air than a house, and it is tall. The stack effect is stronger: warm air rises hard to the ceiling and pushes out through every gap up there, drawing cold air in at the doors below. That is why the floor of a large old building can be uncomfortable while the ceiling is baking.

Intermittent use makes it worse. A building used twice a week gets heated up and allowed to cool repeatedly. Every warm-up drives moisture into cold assemblies.

The ceiling is where the money is. In a tall building, sealing and insulating the top of the volume returns more than anything you do to the walls, because that is where the pressure is highest and the loss concentrated.

For any of this the assessment matters more than the product. If you are responsible for a building like this, the useful first question is not what R-value to specify but where the air is actually leaving.

Farm buildings

Grain and mixed farming brings the standard set - shops, machine storage, quonsets and grain handling. The recurring failure is humid interior air reaching a cold steel deck, condensing, and dripping.

See agricultural spray foam, the quonset guide, machine sheds and stopping condensation in a metal building.

As with anywhere rural, mention if you have more than one building. Bringing a rig out once for three buildings costs less per square foot than three separate trips.

Houses

Central Alberta gives long cold spells with moderate wind, so heat loss here runs more on conduction and stack effect than on wind pressure. The attic and the basement are two ends of the same system - sealing only the top can make the draught at floor level more noticeable.

The order that works: attic sealing before adding depth, then the rim joist, then basement or crawl space if the floors are cold.

If you are still deciding whether any of it is worthwhile, is spray foam worth it and what it costs in Alberta are written to be honest rather than persuasive.

What we do

We are a referral service. We do not install. We connect you with vetted installers and check certification, insurance and WCB standing before an introduction.

We will not quote a price without someone seeing the building. Get a quote.