Coop Improvement - Roof Insulation

Spring has hit Adelaide with a bang and it's been hot and dry. I've been meaning to insulate the roof of Penguin's coop for a while now, but have only been motivated by the sight of hot chickens with their wings out. The roof in Penguin's coop is made of sheet metal, meaning that when the sun hits it, and the sun shines on it during the hottest part of the day, the roof becomes so hot that you can't touch it. The result is that the coop heats up like an oven, making the ground hot, which retains the heat into the night. My plan was to place a barrier to prevent this radiant heat entering the coop, making it more enjoyable for the chickens, not just during the day, but also at night.

I had been balancing some cardboard on a rafter and noticed that this had rather good insulation properties in that the cardboard doesn't get as hot as the roof. I thought that cardboard would make it rather difficult for sanitation. I didn't want to use any building insulation as they were usually foam, which again would make sanitation and pest control difficult.

There was also the foil insulation, but really, that looked like too much work. I could put it on the outside of the roof, to prevent the sun striking the roof. Actually, that's not a bad idea (just thinking out loud here!). Anyway, I settled on cheap corflute. If you don't know what it is, the best descriptor would be plastic cardboard. It's normally used for people putting up signs or as packing material. It's light, relatively cheap and easy to clean.

My first thought was to glue it on to the underside of the roof, but it's a bit hard to hold up the corflute and wait for the glue to set (minimum 20mins! and a full cure time of 24 hours!). So I put up rafters to balance the corflute on.

The rafters were spaced so that the corflute would balance on the beams. I haven't glued or fixed them to the rafters as I wanted to be able to take them down and clean them. A lot of dust settles on every horizontal surface in the coop, especially since the chickens have taken to dust bathing inside.

And above is the final result! We've had some very, very windy days and none of the panels have blown off. So that's great! I don't have to fix them down.

And does it stop the radiant heat? You betcha. I can hold my hand comfortably against the corflute, but the moment I move the panels apart, I can feel the heat from the roof.

This is a work in progress and I'll be happy to get any advice on how else to make my chickens comfortable. Summers are brutal here and I don't want them to die from the heat.

Anything to help me keep on cuddling my chickens ;)