Lining and insulating a steel framed farm building?

[Orionaut]

Looking/hoping to buy a house with a large steel framed agricultural outbuilding. (1600 Sqft or so)

More details as to construction to follow.

However, I am wanting to look into how such a building might be lined and insulated,

And eventually heated too but first things first ​

I am wanting to eventually make it into a comfortable working area rather than having it stay a ******* freezing cold barn!

Anybody here done anything like this?



Any suggestions/advise welcome

 

[touch]

What work will you be doing in there? That's a huge area to heat so I would probably build a smaller wood frame room inside it and insulate that to work in.

 

[Orionaut]

The means I am thinking of for providing the heat are perhaps a bit whacky...

Possibly (I may relent and do things more conventionally eventually however..) I do have one of these.....

(Funny video, you need to do a double click)

(And after the ******* **** And ******* **** I had to deal with dealing today with EON, generating my own electricity from now on from scratch would make life a whole lot easier! Especially since I will have huge tanks of diesel outside as a result of having oil heating anyways)

But the insulation issues remains the same.

 

[Mcnumpty2323]

Hay / straw bales for insulation?

 

[Maccapacca]

By the time you've done it properly you may as well rip it down and build something properly.

I like the idea of a smaller timber building inside.

What size building are we talking about?

 

[BigBoy]

How big a room do you need? Would be cheaper and more cost effective to run to put a 12x10 shed in the space and double insulate it with celotex (layer inside and out). Far easier to heat

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

Yep as others have mentioned, box within a box
Stud wall, layer of cellotex or similar. Treat the roof as if its outside, but really cheap felt etc would be fine. (just in case you get a leak over the top, you want the inside box to be able to be dripped on worst case)

Leave a decent gap round the outside, you can then run services etc round it, so all nice and accessible. If you want to air con (thats what i would use for heating) as they will dehum as well etc you can just put the heat exchanger out the back of the new inside box
Modern aircons are basically heatpumps anyway so already pretty efficient, plus cheap to buy and you can self install

The outside building will act as an insulator to heat and cold, not well, but it will dampen rises/drops in heat

If you really really want to insulate the building then you would need something like spray foam. This is sprayed directly onto the outside layer to insulate it. Would probably be very costly for something of that size.

I would go log cabin as opposed to shed if you follow that route. Buy a half deceent thinkness and you probably wont need insulation as such, they hold the heat well.
There is a build log on here of the guy who did a garage log cabin, but you can have them made to spec as well.

 

[thezappa]

Just reiterating what has already been said; it will be expensive (tens of thousands at least) if you do it properly, not that much less if you diy it.
We have gone out to tender for an industrial unit to be reinstated, it already has the steel frame in place so we just need a couple of walls, doors and a roof. We asked for prices for like-like-replacement and for insulated upgrade, in both cases it was hundreds of thousands, admittedly it is a larger building (just under double the size).

Building in a building would be the way to go.

 

[PlacidCasual]

I guess the question is how warm do you want it? Given the likely surface area getting any kind of decent insulation is going to be expensive and the hot cold bridge may cause increased corrosion as vapour condenses on the steel.

Also what do you want the space for? A few machine tools and a workbench for woodworking will be fine in a large ready to assemble shed where you can keep the temperature up. If you want to work on cars do some large scale welding or a spray booth maybe not. You could line the walls with a ply on standoffs to ensure a ventilation path. Put in a lowered false ceiling depending on the height you have and need. The reduction in draft and improved radiation performance will make it warmer but not warm. But if you're active even in the winter this can be enough. Insulating the floor is going to be impossible because assuming it's on a big concrete slab that's going to suck the heat away unless you go down the shed route.

Good luck by the way. I'm hoping to buy a smallholding in the next few years and I have my thoughts on what I might do to any outbuildings so my thoughts are with you.