coop insulation

[patandchickens]

Chellejeff is of course quite right about putting rigid foamboard on exterior between furring strips to put siding on, all I can say is "doh" not enough caffeine yesterday LOL

The nice (in a way) thing about doing your insulation more normally, sandwiched within the coop wall, is that the inside material is not critical and can quite often be scrounged.

I am not sure whether personally I'd worry about insulating a floor in Texas, although up HERE I'd do it if I were trying to keep the coop significantly
warmer than the outdoor air. I mean, if you were using shavings, depth of shavings is in itself a pretty decent insulator. And as you are using sand, it is going to feel cold on their feeties no matter what, even if it is like four degrees warmer with insulation under it, so if they are happy enough with it now I do not think they'd be any meaningfully MORE happy with insulation. Unless you are keeping the insides of your coop significantly warmer than outdoors in which case it might still be worthwhile.

JMHO though,

Pat

 

[elmo]

Quote:
Thanks, Pat. It was really just idle curiosity that made me ask, although if it turned out there was a nifty, quick and easy way to insulate the floor after the fact, I might consider it. I don't add supplemental heat often enough to our coop to make it worthwhile to take much trouble to do it. The little oil filled radiator that I run on its lowest setting has been working fine on its lowest setting to keep the coop above freezing during our very unusual very cold (for us) spell.

Our really extreme weather is in the summer, and I don't think insulating the floor is going to make any difference with that, one way or another.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I'm not sure if the sand would act as a heat sink, thermal mass, or insulation, probably a bit of all three. I agree with Chellejeff's other idea, blocking off the void underneath. It's amazing how much warmer that keeps a house with a crawl space even if the only insulation on the floor is linoleum, not to mention keeping pipes from bursting under the house. Besides, 6" is just enough for larger predators to hide or chickens to crawl under there and get in trouble, either laying eggs or getting injured or sick and you need to pull them put. I know it is already built, but something to think about for your next one.

Christine21656, I trust you have read Pat's ventilation and cold weather coop pages. The links are under her posts. I think those (plus the muddy run) should be required reading for anyone building a coop and run.

Good luck!

 

[patandchickens]

Quote:
If it were me and I wanted to retrofit an insulated floor, I would just clean the coop out real good, lay down rigid foamboard or a thick layer of very dry shavings, cover it with plywood, screw battens around the edges, and call it good. For a larger walk-in coop you might need to use a couple 2x2s/2x4s or whatever laid across the existing floor (put the insulation between them) to better support larger sheets of plywood especially wehre they meet and especially if you were doing the quick and dirty version with shavings. (Rigid foamboard would really be better, and less likely to cause longer term damage to the coop, but in a dry climate I am pretty sure you could get away with shavings to a considerable degree)

Not syaing you have to DO it of course, but if you did, that's one option.

Pat

 

[elmo]

Quote:
Oh, I thought about that (thanks to tipoff from folks on this forum). The space is secured already with 1/2" by 1/2" hardware cloth. Mice could probably squeeze under there, but they're going to need to be small ones.