At the risk of never finishing this build I’ve waited til now to share it. The job is really close to being finished and has come up great. My wife and I purchased our first home in December 2020 and I am lucky enough to have a 6m x 9m shed / fish room.
We live in Perth, Western Australia. December in a tin shed is really hot and my tanks cooked for a couple of months. In that time I lost 1 fish, a tiger bichir. I underestimated how hot it would get inside during summer so the plan is to insulate it. Right now we are leading into the hottest months of the year again but I’m hoping things will be different. I’ll install a reverse cycle split system air conditioner in the future but don’t have one right now and I’m hoping I won’t need it fingers crossed.
I started with a typical 6x9 steel framed shed which has a pit for car servicing. With everything moved to one side I began work by fixing topspan 60 to the existing steel frame at roughly 1500mm centres. On the roof between the topspan I added some steel strap bracing to help support the blanket insulation.
Next came the ceiling insulation where I used 5 x 10m long 75mm thick R1.8 Earthwool space blankets laid in between the roof sheeting and topspan purlins with the extra strap bracing between for support. For the walls 125mm thick Earthwool R2.5 batt insulation was used and held in place between the topspan purlins with tape before fixing the wall sheeting. Between the ceiling topspan purlins I also added some 90mm R2.0 Earthwool batts bringing the roof insulation up to 165mm thick. I chose colorbond customorb in a shale grey for the cladding so it was waterproof and lightweight. It was fixed horizontally so that I required less topspan framing and less fixings for the sheeting. Using these materials was a lot cheaper than either plasterboard or fibre cement sheeting.
With the wall and ceiling sheeting on I painted that side of the floor using Berger jet dry in regal fortress and also made a cover for the pit out of marine ply. I moved everything onto that side of the shed and repeated the process. At this point I only had two 6 foot tanks, 2 4 foot tanks and an IBC with some koi in it.
We live in Perth, Western Australia. December in a tin shed is really hot and my tanks cooked for a couple of months. In that time I lost 1 fish, a tiger bichir. I underestimated how hot it would get inside during summer so the plan is to insulate it. Right now we are leading into the hottest months of the year again but I’m hoping things will be different. I’ll install a reverse cycle split system air conditioner in the future but don’t have one right now and I’m hoping I won’t need it fingers crossed.
I started with a typical 6x9 steel framed shed which has a pit for car servicing. With everything moved to one side I began work by fixing topspan 60 to the existing steel frame at roughly 1500mm centres. On the roof between the topspan I added some steel strap bracing to help support the blanket insulation.
Next came the ceiling insulation where I used 5 x 10m long 75mm thick R1.8 Earthwool space blankets laid in between the roof sheeting and topspan purlins with the extra strap bracing between for support. For the walls 125mm thick Earthwool R2.5 batt insulation was used and held in place between the topspan purlins with tape before fixing the wall sheeting. Between the ceiling topspan purlins I also added some 90mm R2.0 Earthwool batts bringing the roof insulation up to 165mm thick. I chose colorbond customorb in a shale grey for the cladding so it was waterproof and lightweight. It was fixed horizontally so that I required less topspan framing and less fixings for the sheeting. Using these materials was a lot cheaper than either plasterboard or fibre cement sheeting.
With the wall and ceiling sheeting on I painted that side of the floor using Berger jet dry in regal fortress and also made a cover for the pit out of marine ply. I moved everything onto that side of the shed and repeated the process. At this point I only had two 6 foot tanks, 2 4 foot tanks and an IBC with some koi in it.
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