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High Efficiency pole barn project in Maryland Post New Topic | Post Reply

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Posted: Apr 13, 2009 08:36 PM
High Efficiency pole barn project in Maryland
Iā€™m an energy consultant in central Maryland and I've been asking foam questions here for a couple of months. The help here has been wonderful.

Our project is to build a low cost work shop, that is as energy efficient as possible. The building is a 24ā€™ by 40ā€™ pole barn which is about as air tight as a chain link fence, but is a very low cost structure. We used 2" of 2lb foam on the interior and the underside of the roof to achive the maximum air seal and insulation value for least cost.

Friday we ran a blower door test on the structure. The result was 0.645 air changes per hour @ 50 Pa. (ACH/50) or .038 ACH Estimated Natural Infiltration Rate (ENIR). A "tight" house is 5 ACH/50 or 0.35 ACH ENIR or less. That's tight! Heat lose due to air infiltartion will not be a problem (breathing might)!

I can't imagine how much it would cost to achive the same results, using conventional fiberglass/celulose/vapor barrier technology.

Thanks for the help,
Ron Camerata
Energy Management & Control
Mount Airy, Maryland
SprayFoamSupply.com
Posted: Apr 13, 2009 11:46 PM
I don't think that it would be possible to get it that tight with conventional fiberglass/celulose/vapor barrier technology. Not for any price. Congrats!
mason
Posted: Apr 14, 2009 07:52 AM
Congratulations on your project. As they say "Seeing is believing"
Posted: Aug 06, 2009 11:13 PM
Just a quick follow up. I'm finishing the electric in the shop today. I was drilling a hole in the outside wall, under the overhang, when my hand bushed the underside of the metal roof. It felt hot, so I decided to see just how hot. I grabed my IR thermometer and shot the underside of the interior roof (2" CC on steel roof). It read 78 degf. I shot the underside of the ovehang, bare metal, it read 118 degf. That's a 40 deg DT!

This was done about 3:30pm with full sun on a southern exposure roof. The measurement points were about 4' apart.

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