Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Craving Structure - Part 1

Although an 'envelope' structure's inner and outer skins are largely independent, they are connected at doors and windows and may have other connecting elements.
Commonly referred to as an 'envelope' structure, this type of construction may be accomplished with almost any system: pole barn, traditional metal building, or Quonset. It is essentially a building with independent inner and outer skins.
Furring strips applied to the Galvalume arches.
In our application, The outer skin features 3/4" EPS insulation glued to 1"x 4" EPS furring strips. The big challenge here was finding an adhesive that would hold the EPS to the Galvalume but not cavitate (melt) the EPS.
The furring strip gives a good base for mounting the EPS panels while solving the problem of dealing with the Quonset bolts. This method also adds about 12 square inches to each 'ducts' cross section.
After much research and trial and error, we located a company that produces a contact-type adhesive that works flawlessly.
Contact adhesive is applied to the 4' x 16' x 3/4" insulation panels and pressed into place.
After a few minutes drying time, the insulation panels can be installed.
The bottom run of panels complete, we are ready to start the second run. Note the open space at the bottom.

We used 3/4"-thick panels to allow a smooth fit inside the curved Quonset arches.

EPS panels easily form to the curve of the Quonset Hut arches.

Space at the bottom of the panels is left open to allow cooler, moist air to be pulled into the ventilation 'ducts' and lifted to the exhaust plenum at the roof ridge along the top of the building.
This photo gives an excellent illustration of the 'duct' formed by the Quonset ridge and the EPS insulation.

3 comments:

  1. How's the heat production? Assuming you have the option of venting it inside or outside...

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  2. Interesting approach to insulation and finish...I was thinking of running perpendicular metal furring to hold drywall.

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  3. Great article but you didn't mention the manufacture of the contact cement that bonded the foam to the metal?

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