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Keeping shed cool

bizziel

Alpha Buck
Hi everyone

Just looking for some tips for keeping our bunny shed cool. We have insulated the inside with that reflective film stuff but the temp inside is still getting up to around 30degrees, definitely not ideal. We are going to rig up some mesh covers to go over the windows so we can leave them wide open but keep out cats and foxes but we were wondering if there is anything else we can do, maybe something white to cover the roof? Any help really appreciated!
Thanks
 
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Hi,

I'm not sure about the roof, but have you thought about creating an inner door so that the shed can be left open to allow air to circulate. We made one for our shed, as you can see it's slightly inside, this was so we could have a storage area, but you could create it directly in the doorway.

Good idea about the windows though that should help. Do they have a run they can go out in to? x

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Paint the outside the palest colour you can (my mate painted her stable silver and that worked too, if you can bear the glare!). Under the roofing felt, put that foam-backed radiator foil with the reflecting side outward: doesn't have to be full coverage as long as it's >50% of the roof. If you touch the felt on a hot day you'll feel how hot it gets! Make sure there's a vent at the back to allow a through draft: the higher this is the better. In my playhouse I have a vent at the roof apex opposite the window and door and half the door is a window itself :) I've added some hopefully helpful pictures :)

Polystyrene stuck on with contact adhesive: make sure it's safe for polystyrene before purchase!
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Felt left as a big overhang on the already-12" overhang: provides a lot of shade. Also demonstrates the ginormous window area :)
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This is the only one of the vent I can find: this is before we insulated the inside (1" standard polystyrene). It's covered with mesh but we didn't put insulation over it :)
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I was much more worried about the poor things overheating than freezing to death: much easier to add 'layers' than strip them! It's relatively cool in ours at the moment, and we haven't even gotten around to painting it white yet! Bunnies spend most of the day on the windowsill (half that time in the sun :roll:), then move to the tube entrance for a draft, then out on to the concrete under the tarp in their run, and then if they get too warm under there, over to their hutch under-run behind the house (NNE facing). Being able to get out and on to concrete, cool grass/soil or whatever is pretty crucial for my fluffy Lopsy as he overheats quite easily, being black and relatively long-furred!
 
Great idea about the door, thanks threebs. No, unfortunately they don't have an attached run, as the shed is pretty big we figured they didn't need the extra space but they only went in there in Oct so we haven't been through a summer yet.

I'll speak to my OH about building a screen door, that would definitely let the air through.

I wondered about painting the roof white but OH says we can't because it's bitumen.
 
Thanks Keletkezes, that's really helpful, loads of great ideas. I think we created a vent at the top of one wall but I'll check. Painting it pale would help a lot too. Plus we'll insulate the roof more, that radiator stuff is easy to work with. Thinking about it, our doors have windows in them that we could just replace the perspex with mess in the summer months. Thanks so much for the pics, very helpful.
 
Thinking about it, our doors have windows in them that we could just replace the perspex with mess in the summer months. Thanks so much for the pics, very helpful.
Glad the pictures are useful!

Windows: I removed the battens, kept the least rotten (the whole playhouse was £40 on Gumtree, it wasn't in great nick but fine for the bunnies!), pushed the perspex out (only one broke! I fix it with plastic glue, like that used for aircraft models [not superglue/cyanoacrylate, can't remember chemical name offhand]) then meshed the whole thing :thumb: Perspex goes back in when it gets cold/wet, and is kept in with turnbuttons.

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I've found that putting that reflective insulation stuff, or even one of those emergency blankets that look like tin foil, on the outside of the felt reflects the sun off well and makes a big difference.
Although I'm not tall enough to be affected by the glare from the roof!

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Build a false roof on top of the existing one. Put some timber over the roof in battens, then fix corrugated bitumen sheets on top of the battens. The corrugated sheets will absorb a lot of the heat and air will flow underneath the corrugated sheets, keeping the shed cool.

Also paint the top white if you want. You can use greenhouse whitewash to temporarily reflect light and heat from transparent surfaces/windows. It will run off in the rain though, so make sure it doesn't go into the run
 
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