CoatingsPro Magazine - January 2022
Coated SPF for Cold Storage
Claire Trageser 2021-12-28 22:08:46
Stone-Cold Storage: Coated Insulation for a Major Grocery Store
For grocery stores everywhere, storing food at cold temperatures is vital to the business. If food gets too hot, it goes bad, and that is money that is just thrown in the garbage.
This cold storage concern is especially important on the islands of Hawaii, where almost all grocery items have to be shipped to the islands by boat or plane and then stored safely until they are sold to customers. As anyone who has ever lived on or visited the beautiful islands will tell you, this shipping and storage comes at a cost. (It can cost almost $7 for a gallon of milk on the big island!)
All of this means that when there was a need for a new roof on a cold storage facility owned by a grocery store in Hawaii that wishes to remain unnamed, the job was very important. “It’s an old metal building that they purchased, and they intended for it to be a cold storage building for their products,” said Gigi Auditor, an industrial photographer who worked on the job.
“This is a building that’s been there in some sort for 30 years,” said Michael “Red” Coleman, the project foreman for MRC Roofing, LLC, which was the contractor working on the update. “It’s been added onto and changed around, so there’s at least three different types of metal roof on this building and several different levels to it over the years.” The solution was insulation.
Switching to Spray Foam
Coleman is a responsible management employee at MRC Roofing. The Honolulu, Hawaii-based contracting company provides roofing services and craftsmanship for residential, commercial, and industrial facilities in Honolulu. It also installs spray polyurethane foam (SPF) insulation to both exterior roofing and interior walls and attics for both insulation properties and noise-cancelling qualities. The company has been in business for more than 40 years and has 16 employees in the field and 6 in the office.
MRC Roofing landed this particular job through an existing relationship with the general contractor, Coleman said. “We were contacted by Tri State General Contractors. They’re the general contractor, and we had done work with their head guy, Maurice Garcia,” Coleman said. “We’ve done a couple of jobs for them in the past, so they contacted us for the installation portion of it.”
But even before they officially landed the job, there was an interesting conversation to be had with the owners. “They had brought a consultant in from California, and they had specified a single-ply roof plus board stock insulation, which would have been polyisocyanurate board,” Coleman said. “I didn’t feel that would work. And the way they had spec’ed it was, unfortunately, really poor. I had several letters back and forth with the building owner and staff to point that out. But they did have it originally spec’ed with single ply. They did get the bids and they came in way higher than they expected. And that’s pretty true for Hawaii and single ply.”
Coleman was able to convince the owners to look again at SPF, also called spray foam. “Once the bids came in high, we gave them an alternate with the spray foam, which was about 30 percent less,” he said.
It also “helped” that “the building was so cut up,” Coleman said. In fact, the job was a combination of j rib and corrugated metals, with the walls being j rib and the roof having both.
Convincing the owner to use spray foam as a solution may not have been too difficult. “Actually, they have used foam in the past on several different parts, so it wasn’t new to them,” Coleman explained. “But like I said, the consultants were pretty adamant about putting single ply on it. Once they understood that the single ply might not be as effective as the spray foam, then they decided spray foam was a good way to go.”
“Project requirements and the timeline were not favorable for [the originally spec’d] system,” Coleman continued. “Condensation issues under the board stock insulation was a question that couldn’t be resolved. These factors made it easy to switch to spray foam insulation.”
Smooth Sailing With New Equipment
Once the job was secured, Coleman was ready to get to work. He and a crew of six people tackled the job, which had several parts to it.
First, there was the cold storage roof, which measured out at 22,200 square feet (2,062.4 m2). There, the team first pressure washed and removed ventilators and skylights, and then they put down an average of 5 inches (12.7 cm) of 2.5 pound (1.1 kg) National Coatings Premiseal 60R Foam. They followed that up with an average of 22 mils (558.8 microns) dry film thickness (DFT) of National Coatings Acryshield Vapor Barrier A410, and then installed an average of 20 mils (508.0 microns) of National Coatings SRC 740 Silicone. This vapor barrier was to help avoid moisture getting into the foam above the freezer and cold storage facilities since those areas have a greater vapor drive than a normal building.
The next area to tackle was the office roof, which measured 3,700 square feet (343.7 m2). There, the team also removed ventilators and skylights before installing an average of 3.5 inches (8.9 cm) of the 2.5-pound spray foam. On top, they added an average of 38 mils (965.2 microns) of National Coatings SRC 740 Silicone.
The job also included overhangs that measured out at 3,000 square feet (278.7 m2). There, the team put down an average of 1 inch (2.5 cm) of spray foam. Then, they followed that up again with an average of 38 mils of National Coatings SRC 740 Silicone.
Lastly, the MRC crew had to tackle the interior walls of the facility, which combined to a surface of 12,200 square feet (1,133.4 m2). For that part of the job, they put down an average of 5 inches (12.7 cm) of National Coatings Foamsulate 2-pound (1.1 kg) spray foam, and then they installed International Fireproof Technology’s DC315 Fireproof Paint to an average of 20 mils DFT.
To do the job, the team used a 21st JMT, Inc. Plural Component Hydraulic Proportioning Unit, a Graco Probler P2 Air Purge Gun, a Graco Xtreme X70 sprayer, and scissor lifts when working inside. They also tried something new they had never used before: Coleman got a SprayWorks Spraybot automated spray foam machine, a robot that sprays foam for you.
“It was our first time working with a spray bot, but hand-spraying 5 inches of foam is not as easy, as smooth as we’d like,” Coleman said. “We’d researched a spray bot, and I understood if it did it mechanically, if it did what I thought it would do, it would go very smoothly.”
And, what were the results, you might ask? Coleman was very pleased. “It did exactly what I thought it would do, which was put down foam in a very nice pattern, very consistent, and it put down exactly what was needed, exactly 5 inches,” he said.
There was not much of a learning curve to using the spray bot either, Coleman explained. “It was very easy; we had it dialed in in about one day,” he said.
The SprayWorks Spraybot is definitely something the MRC crews will be using again in the future. “We actually bought a second one and started using it for spraying coating also,” Coleman said.
Elemental Considerations
Using new equipment wasn’t the only thing that went smoothly on the job. According to Coleman, the biggest issue to overcome was the crew’s crunch for time.
“By the time we had gotten the contract for the roof, a lot of the stuff inside was done. So we were under pressure to get at least a couple of inches of foam on all of the areas that were going to be cold storage because they were about to start to fire up the compressors and they were going to start to bring the temperature down pretty fast,” Coleman explained. “So we were under a time constraint to get it all insulated. Otherwise, we would have had condensation, and we wouldn’t have been able to spray it because the deck would have been too cold.”
Part of that time crunch also came from the fact that MRC Roofing operates in Hawaii. “MRC Roofing was given notice to start the project roughly three months before project closing,” Coleman said. “Working in Hawaii means that materials take anywhere from two to three weeks to get to the islands. Insulating the interior of the building was the priority because the cooling system was set to be turned on a month before closing. With temperatures in the 37-to-42 degree range [2.8–5.6 °C], installing spray foam after the cooling system was turned on was not an option.”
One factor that comes from working in Hawaii that is usually an issue did not turn out to be one this time: the rain. For those who picture nothing but sunny days in Hawaii, that is not actually the case. “Usually, there’s a lot of rain in Hawaii, but we were very lucky that we didn’t have one rain day,” Coleman said. “Weather was not an issue on this project — mostly sunny, blue sky Hawaiian days. The winds, though, are always considered when installing spray foam on a roof, especially in a congested area.” MRC used netting when spraying, and the SprayWorks Spraybot included a spray cage. Any overspray issues were mitigated.
Exceeding Expectations
As for safety, MRC Roofing installed fall protection guardrails and perimeter lines on the roof. When the crew was working on the interior spray foam portion of the job, they had a fresh air system, Coleman said. And in general, the crew wore proper personal protective equipment (PPE), including 3M goggles. The use of the robot allowed the crew to avoid having to use a ton of PPE, but when working without the robot, the spray foam technician did use a supplied air respirator and wore eye protection, gloves, coveralls, and boots.
Thanks to the hard work of his crew, Coleman got the job done on time. Interior insulation was completed in 21 days, and roof insulation and coating were completed in 45 days. In total, they covered 41,100 square feet (3,818.3 m2) of surfaces.
The results are so positive that the building owner actually has been using less electricity than expected. “The whole roof is covered with solar panels, and they decided how much electricity they would need to operate the building and put panels on the roof that they thought they’d need,” Coleman said. “They just went with generic calculations for what it would take to keep it cold, and SPF far exceeded those calculations.” That means that “the solar array they put on was way too big, so they’re producing a lot of extra energy than they thought they needed.”
There’s nothing like exceeding your client’s expectations!
JOB AT A GLANCE
PROJECT:
Install SPF and coatings to the roof and interior walls at a converted building
COATINGS CONTRACTOR:
MRC Roofing, LLC
Honolulu, HI
FB: mrcroofing
SIZE OF CONTRACTOR:
22 people
SIZE OF CREW:
6 crew members
PRIME CLIENT:
Grocery store chain that wishes to remain unnamed
SUBSTRATE:
J rib and corrugated metals
CONDITION OF SUBSTRATE:
Used
SIZE OF JOB:
41,100 sq. ft.
DURATION:
66 days total
UNUSUAL FACTORS/CHALLENGES:
» Time constraints were due to the cold storage facility being turned on.
» The crew had to work alongside other trades.
» Wind concerns required the crew to use netting and a spray cage.
» They tried new equipment to install the SPF on this job.
MATERIALS/PROCESSES:
» Used a 21st JMT, Inc. Plural Component Hydraulic Proportioning Unit, a Graco Probler P2 Air Purge Gun, and a Graco Xtreme X70 sprayer
» Prepped with power washer
For cold storage roof:
» Removed ventilators and skylights
» Put down 5 inches of 2.5-pound National Coatings Premiseal 60R Foam
» Installed 22 mils DFT of National Coatings Acryshield Vapor Barrier A410, and then an average of 20 mils of National Coatings SRC 740 Silicone
For office roof:
» Removed ventilators and skylights
» Installed 3.5 inches of 2.5-pound National Coatings Premiseal 60R Foam
» Added an average of 38 mils of National Coatings SRC 740 Silicone
For overhangs:
» Installed 1 inch of 2.5-pound National Coatings Premiseal 60R Foam
» Installed an average of 38 mils of National Coatings SRC 740 Silicone
For interior walls:
» Installed 5 inches of National Coatings Foamsulate 2-pound spray foam
» Installed an average of 20 mils of International Fireproof Technology's DC315 Fireproof Paint
SAFETY CONSIDERATIONS:
» Installed fall protection guardrails and perimeter lines on the roof
» Used a fresh air system for the interior work
» Wore PPE, including 3M goggles
VENDOR TEAM
3M
Safety equipment manufacturer
St. Paul, MN
Graco Inc.
Equipment manufacturer
Minneapolis, MN
International Fireproof Technology, Inc.
Coating manufacturer
Irvine, CA
JMT, Inc.
Equipment manufacturer
Minerva, OH
FB: 21stjmt
National Coatings, A Henry Company
Coatings manufacturer
Camarillo, CA
SprayWorks Equipment Group
Equipment manufacturer
Kent, OH
@SprayFoamRigs
Tri-State General Contractors
General Contractor
Honolulu, HI
FB: tristatesanmarcos
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