Winterizing The Hangar

You can also rolled insulation in the ceiling.

Getting it to stay up is the problem. It's just a bare, tin ceiling --
no "joists" to attach the stuff to.

I also strongly recommend
ceiling fans- a few cheap ones from Home Depot will do wonders

Yeah, once the ceiling is insulated, that will be good. I also want to
add better lighting. Right now I've got three 500 watt spot/area
lights, which are better than the single 60 watt bulb the hangar came
with -- but not much!

Now, all I need to do is figure out is how to get an electrically heated
ramp, and put a hot tub in the hangar.

I've got only electric, no gas, so we're stuck with portable heat
options. And I don't think the hot tub would work well with a torpedo
heater! (It would sure be cool in your hangar, though...)
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
oups.com...
thanks to the guy only hitting our "kitchen" area.
(No beer was harmed, thankfully!)

Allah be praised!!

I just looked up an invoice for a building we did last summer. It was about
$0.25 per square foot for 3" on 200,000 sq ft.
Jim

The ceiling and walls in our hanger are insulated with foil faced fiberglass
batting held up between the steel trusses with nylon strapping like the
strapping you use to secure items onto a pallet, Signode is the most popular
brand. It's run cross wise to the joists, tightened and clamped at each end.
This same type of insulating method was also used in many of our warehouses,
however in the '60s they used metal strapping and you can guess what high
humidity did to the steel straps. Make sure your roof has NO leaks first.
Jim

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
oups.com...
You can also rolled insulation in the ceiling.

Getting it to stay up is the problem. It's just a bare, tin ceiling --
no "joists" to attach the stuff to.

I also strongly recommend
ceiling fans- a few cheap ones from Home Depot will do wonders

Yeah, once the ceiling is insulated, that will be good. I also want to
add better lighting. Right now I've got three 500 watt spot/area
lights, which are better than the single 60 watt bulb the hangar came
with -- but not much!

Now, all I need to do is figure out is how to get an electrically heated
ramp, and put a hot tub in the hangar.

I've got only electric, no gas, so we're stuck with portable heat
options. And I don't think the hot tub would work well with a torpedo
heater! (It would sure be cool in your hangar, though...)
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Last year at our local curling club they installed a suspended ceiling
by making a grid with 1/8" cables. then on top they laid bubble wrap
thats silver on one side. The cost was pretty reasonable IIRC and it
works very well.

As some of you know, our hangar building was rammed by a semi-truck
this past August, during the repaving of our taxiway. Fairly extensive
damage was done to one corner of the building, but we were able to keep
the plane inside, thanks to the guy only hitting our "kitchen" area.
(No beer was harmed, thankfully!)

The airport maintenane guy put a tarp over the car-sized hole, and thus
it remained -- until this week. We were out of the hangar for four
days, while they replaced a major steel girder, and a bunch of sheet
metal.

So, today we moved back in. To facilitate repairs, we had moved
EVERYTHING out of the kitchen corner, which meant our counters,
microwave(s), refrigerators, and a screened in tent (which we put
inside the corner of the hangar not to keep bugs out, but to keep heat
IN) -- along with, of course, the airplane. (Which we got to store in
our historic Boeing/United Hangar, which was built in 1929 for the
airmail service. Man, if those walls could only talk...)

When we moved into our hangar six years ago, we attached high density
styrofoam sheets sheets (commonly known as "R" board) to some of the
sheet metal walls. We used caulk-gun construction adhesive to hold the
4' x 8' boards to the sheet metal, which has worked great.

Initially we did this not for insulation value, but to have a surface
to which we could staple photographs, maps, and the like. We
discovered that it was simply not possible to tape photos to the sheet
metal walls, since the cold and heat would eventually degrade the paper
and tape -- but the R-board worked great.

It also (naturally) made the hangar warmer. However, it's fairly
pricey stuff, and we ended up only insulating about 25% of the walls.
We also used the "Great Stuff" expandable aerosol foam stuff to fill
ALL cracks and voids in the hangar, to help keep the wind and snow out,
but also (more importantly) to keep the birds and bugs out. It has
worked great for this purpose. (Although you can see where birds have
pecked their way through it, in spots.)

And that's the way everything sat, until today. As long as the whole
hangar was ripped apart, Mary and I took the opportunity to buy half a
dozen more sheets of the R board, a few more cans of Great Stuff, and
got to work. Cutting the stuff to fit the angled roof line was a bit
tricky, but otherwise it's a simple "measure, cut, and glue" process
that goes pretty quickly.

Our two most exposed walls are now fully insulated (giving us several
more years of photograph-pin-up room!) and tightly sealed with Great
Stuff. You could almost instantly feel the place get less drafty,
although until I do something about the thin tin ceiling (which has a
roof ridge vent for ventilation) it will never be really *warm*.
(That's why we bought the tent. When you stick a torpedo heater into
the tent, the tent roof keeps the heat down closer to you. Without it,
the heat just instantly dissipates.)

Can anyone think of ANY way to insulate the ceiling/roof? The vent was
put in because (according to the gray heads on the field) moisture used
to build up so badly inside the unventilated tin box that airplanes
would be wet from condensation.

What do you guys do to keep your hangar warm, animal and snow free?
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
oups.com..

My 40x40 hanger in South Arkansas is fully insulated with good old
fiberglass insulation. The roof is the same with a layer of chicken wire
holding it in place. There are 6 panels up there that are translucent and,
of course, they are not insulated.

Now it doesn't get near as cold here for as long as it does where you are
but a couple of electric space heaters will keep it warm enough to work on
the plane.

With that vent in there it is gonna get cold.

I have a cieling with insulation on top. I had the sweaty airplane
problem but put in a cieling fan and things have been fine since. It has
not been turned off in 8 years! (2 actually)But with the air moving, it
can hold a lot more moisture and won't condense out. With my entire
hangar insulated the temperature does not get below freezing in the
winter. And it is cool in the summer also. The cieling fans are
fantastic! Also the floor is epoxy painted perhaps keeping out ground
moisture.

Jay Honeck wrote:
What do you guys do to keep your hangar warm, animal and snow free?

Just one thing:

I live in Arizona. It works amazingly well !

And...you save on electricity costs by using it as an oven in summer!

Not only that, but it's a convenient way to make breakfast in the
morning -- just pop the eggs, toast and (pick your fave meat product)
on either a nice, clean corner of the floor or on the wing in the sun.

I put a workshop in my hangar and insulated with foil faced insulation
with 1/4" of fiberglass. I have been amazed!

My main problem is the opposite of yours - heat. My plan was to install
an HVAC unit and insulate the hangar sized room. Since I have a metal
hangar, I looked at metal building oriented solutions. Radiant heat
gain/loss seems to be a primary problem. The metal walls radiate
outside heat into the space via infrared radiation. And radiate inside
heat out the same say.

Therefore, stuff like this:
http://www.steelbuilding.com/buildin...ories_foil.htm

works very well. I lined the room with the white faced side in (good
light reflection and general looks)and have the foil side facing out.
Without any HVAC operation, it moderates the the temp withing the
workshop unbelieveably well. It just never gets as cold or as hot as
the outside temp over a 24 hour period. The place is just a pleasure to
work in. Add some AC or heat, and it's like home.

Mass insulation and air infiltration work well. But my experience in a
metal building suggests that radiation control may be equally or even
more important. Someone with some engineering talent should be able to
set me straight.

By the way, the stuff goes up with double sided tape which also works
unbelievably well in my application. I could have thrown the staple gun
away.

The Visitor wrote:

With that vent in there it is gonna get cold.

I have a cieling with insulation on top. I had the sweaty airplane
problem but put in a cieling fan and things have been fine since. It has
not been turned off in 8 years! (2 actually)But with the air moving, it
can hold a lot more moisture and won't condense out. With my entire
hangar insulated the temperature does not get below freezing in the
winter. And it is cool in the summer also. The cieling fans are
fantastic! Also the floor is epoxy painted perhaps keeping out ground
moisture.

http://www.radiantguard.com/?gclid=C...FQdUPgodkBcXBg