Reduce Ice Build-up on your Curtain Fabric
One common issue with natural ventilation in livestock buildings during the winter months is a build-up of frost and ice on the inside of your curtain fabric. This can lead to excessive load on your operating hardware causing breakage and breakdowns.
To maintain a desired interior temperature during cold weather, it's important to operate your facility at capacity to generate the necessary heat from your livestock. However, a surprising cause of frost build-up is actually having your barn too warm. The heat produced by your livestock is full of moisture, and if you restrict ventilation this moisture will be trapped inside, creating condensation on the curtain fabric that will freeze into ice.
You need to make sure that your ridge exhaust is operating at full capacity and your curtains are being opened enough to exchange the warm humid air with fresh dry air from outside. If you reduce the temperature inside the barn as low as possible without creating any mechanical issues the humidity level will be lower, and the amount of condensation will be greatly reduced. You will need to experiment to find the best temperature for your barn depending on the location and the insulation value of the structure but remember, cold and dry is always better than warm and damp.
