What [...]]]> This article is a continuation of the previous one about insulating your chicken house. This time we will focus on thermal mass of your chicken house plan, heat inertia and other useful things. I will show you how to make your chicken house plan warmer in the winter and colder in the summer.

What is a chicken house thermal mass and why do you need it?

Term “thermal mass” refers to the ability of a certain material or structure to absorb and then release heat. This principle is best shown on the example of a beach. When you were small, you probably noticed that when it is hot, the sand on the beach got hotter much faster than the water in the sea. However, after the sunset, when the temperature got lower, the sand got colder very fast, while the water stayed warm long after the sun disappeared.

This happened because water has higher thermal mass than the sand. In plain words, sand absorbs heat faster but also releases it much, much quicker than the water. How can you utilize this rule in your chicken house plan? Simple, you should include more elements that have high thermal mass inside of your coop, and it will remain warmer during the night.

Try to incorporate things like: stone, concrete, earthen floor, barrels of water, etc. This will insure your coop doesn’t lose the temperature too fast. If winters in your area are extremely cold, you may think about heating the water manually and then placing it inside your coop. However, it is important not to place hot containers in a place where your chickens have easy access, or they may get burned.

Side effects of too high thermal mass

While large thermal mass is a great way to warm your chicken house up, in the summer, it can be a problem. Just as in winter, things like stones and concrete will give away a lot of heat in the night, exposing your chickens to a very high average temperature throughout the day.

However, there is a method to fight this. When the thermometer is showing extremely high temperatures, you can put some stones into the freezer during the night and then place them inside your chicken house to make the day more comfortable for your chickens.

The size of your chicken house plan and temperature

If you have read some of my other posts, you know that I stress the importance of the proper chicken house plan size in almost everyone of them. However, how does the size affect the temperature of the chicken house plan? In every space, we face a phenomenon of heat inertia. It is obvious that, the larger the space the more air in it. This in return means that in order to change the temperature of a big chicken house, you require a larger amount of cold air than you would need with a small coop. However, you also need more energy to heat it up.

As with everything in nature there is a balance, but, building a large chicken house plan seems more logical than a small one. Yes the small one will be easier to heat, but will also lose its temperature way faster. Of course it is your decision as to how big your chicken house should be but, my recommendation is to choose the bigger size.

It is all, this and the previous article is everything you need to know about passive heating your chicken houses. In the next article, I will discuss the active methods to heat a chicken house. I will also try to combine all the methods to make your chicken house plan warmer and give you specific solutions to many of the problems you may encounter.