The stock of cattle in Poland at the end of 2018 is almost 6.2 million head. It is true that beef consumption in Poland has declined in recent years, but the consumption of dairy products has increased significantly, and meat exports to Western European countries have also increased. In combination with the still high financing of agriculture from EU budgets, as well as the relatively high affluence of Polish farmers' wallets and the need to modernise farms, this offers considerable development potential for manufacturers of building materials used in the construction of sandwich panel barns.

For Izopanel Sp. z o.o., the agricultural market is a very important area of sales, as evidenced by the fact that the vast majority of fairs and trade fairs at which the Gdańsk-based manufacturer exhibits are Agro fairs. Experience in selecting the right products for constructing cowsheds from sandwich panels, a wide range of products and competitive prices make the sandwich panels from the Agrodach, IzoWall and IzoRoof series a frequent choice of cattle breeders in Poland.

Several types of sandwich panels are used for the construction and retrofitting of barns:

• IzoWall PIR and IzoRoof PIR panels if high thermal insulation is required but low thickness of the barn walls and roof is expected
• IzoWall EPS and IzoRoof EPS panels when there are no requirements for fire resistance or low thickness of the barn walls/roof, but an attractive price is required
• Izowall boards in the cladding version when cladding masonry walls outside/inside the barn building
• AgroRoof panels - if the farmer wants fibreglass cladding on the side of the barn ceiling

For the correct selection of the board, we should get answers to a number of basic questions, including:

1. What will be the purpose of the barn?

For the rearing of adult cattle, the thermal performance of the barn will be able to be considerably lower than for calving cows and rearing calves. For cattle, the required insulation thickness for the PIR board will be 60mm (U=0.35 W/m²*K), while for breeding and rearing calves the requirements usually result in 100mm thick slabs (U=0.21 W/m²*K).

2. Are we planning to modernise or build a new facility?

When upgrading an existing building, it is likely that for cost reasons it will be necessary to adapt to technical constraints, i.e. roof support spacing, required board thicknesses, wall construction. This dictates certain solutions in advance, e.g. if the support spacing is too large, Agrodach panels cannot be used, if a low U-value is required and the wall dictates a panel width of e.g. 120mm, polystyrene and wool boards cannot be used, etc.

3. Will fire resistance be a key factor?

In this case, the boards used for the barn building will have to have a fire resistance class marked on the design. For example, PIR boards may be classed EI30, while MWF mineral wool boards may even be classed EI120 (giving a minimum of 120 minutes from the time of fire to leave the barn building, for 2 hours the fire will not penetrate to the other side of the partition).

4. What is the structure of the barn roof?

In the case of a roof structure based on trapezoidal sheeting, the sandwich panel is used for the soffit, in which case a wall panel can be used on a special structure without insulating the roof.

If you want to use a sandwich panel to build a barn roof, you need to consider how to adapt the structure to the load and strength requirements of the panel, how often to determine the supports, what core material to use, what length and how to connect the panel on the roof. For example, a sandwich panel with a mineral wool core has four times the weight of a panel of the same thickness made of polyurethane, which has a significant impact on the structure.

5. How strongly do we want to protect the interior of the cowshed from corrosion due to the high corrosive environment inside the cowshed?

Some manufacturers use the same coating solutions in sandwich panels as for storage buildings, where the corrosive environment is according to class C2. In contrast, according to the standards, the environment in livestock facilities qualifies as class C3 to C5, depending on the type of facility. Therefore, the application of the standard SP15 coating (Standard Polyester 15 microns) will result in rapid corrosion outbreaks, especially with frequent cleaning of the slab surface in the barn.

In such a situation, Izopanel recommends using a coating such as GranitFarm or FoodSafe, which provides high corrosion resistance of the panel inside the barn. In cases where the investor is limited by the budget, we suggest a sandwich panel with SP25 (Standard Polyester 25 micron) coating, providing C3 class protection.