Steel freespan building with interior office build out

viper

We are moving closer to construction of a multi purpose building. We will be dedicating 1/3 of the building to office space and will climate control the whole building 24/7. Due to increasing energy costs, we would like to be aggressive with sealing/insulating the building and would like to discuss options for this.

Our plan right now is to use 6" plastic sided glass on the walls pinched between the sheeting and purlins and 6" bare pinched in the ceiling. Once the sheeting is done, we planned to add another 6-8" of plastic sided glass in a banded system in the ceiling.

Do you guys have anything other to add to further improve insulation? I do NOT want to use icenine (sp) because we may need to change/add plumbing from time to time and that system is also very expensive and leaves a nasty looking wall.

Bondo

Ayuh,.... Put in radiant tubing, over atleast 2" of foam board in yer Floor....

viper

You bet. That is already in the build plan though I have not researched the foam underlayment much. Once major concern I have is the stiffness of the floor. we will be installed very high precision cnc machines on the floor where, believe it or not, they will certainly move the floor. Many machines require well over 12" of concrete but we are only doing 8" in the cnc area so our steel network and pad will be critical. Pouring special support pillars is not an option because the machines will get moved from time to time.

I certainly intend to maximize the performance of the sub grade and may even set all my tubing in floable fill which is basically sand with a slight amount of portand in it to max it stiff. Might really help in the large slab pour too.

Certainly open to ideas on this.

jomama45

In your scenario, I'd skip the in-floor heat. The foam will allow for too much movement in an 8" floor that houses CNC tooling machines. W/o the foam, I can't see the radiant as being very effective. I suppose the heating contractor could have the heat calcs run to verify.

These must not be real large CNC machines though if they don't require an isolated base? we've done our fair amount of bases, and they all require a fairly substantial chunk of concrete.

viper

Machines weight 30-50K. The design of the machine really dictates how much movement is tolerated. For instance, a gantry or bridge mill design will tolerate less movement because it cannot be designed to be self loading. A lathe chassis can be a mono casting and self load and really do fine on a minimal pad.

I have certainly identified the concerns of the floor insulator and still looking for ideas. We do other engineering here and have run the heat loss calcs and the floor heat is not really a stand out winner but I will admit that i want it because of the comfort factor. We will be using bare concrete in the office space and a common complaint is cold concrete.

The thermal mass of the concrete also will help us control delta Ts in the office space and possible help us further in cooling in reducing the thermal mass to be cooled.

Are there any structural insulation medias available for this situation? I was considering looking into a blended floable fill with a specified insulation media blended in. IA, something with the compaction rate of sand, with the insulation values near closed cell foam.