The Forestry Forum

Has anyone used insulated steel panels to build a kiln rather than the traditional timber frame? The sheets are rated to R40.
There's a local company who will cut and supply all the material for a lot less than it would cost me to build in timber and a fraction of the time.
Getting it sealed is not an issue.

Thanks

my concern would be long term rustproofing.

Although the panels are insulated, the joints often are not so there is a lot of heat loss through the joints.

Along with Gene's concerns I would check and see if the side of the panel inside the kiln could be sheathed with something else that the tannic acid in the wood would not react with.

Thats very helpful, I will take that into consideration.

Thanks

I have built a couple 80m3 kilns out polystyrene sandwich material the first one was coloursteel ie plastic coated steel with 4 inch polystyrene inside (the same stuff cool-stores are made of ) it was cheap to build worked for about 4 years made a lot of money for me but rusted out and couldn't be sealed any more more second one was Aluminium skinned it lasted a little longer but the polystyrene got waterlogged it became very heavy and basically collapsed under it own weight 
I had problems with insurance the polystyrene is very flammable having  it close to a heat sauce is problematic the local fire brigade have a policy standing well back and watching it burn if it ever caught a light the fumes from burning polystyrene are very toxic the whole site became difficult to insure if I wanted to rebuild the kiln for a third time