Summertime heat can be overwhelming. Review the basics on keeping your flocks cool and comfortable all summer long.

1. Summer Ventilation
Basics
VENTILATION DESIGNS, VENTILATION SCHEMES, EVAPORATIVE COOLING

2. Barn Types
• When choosing a barn type, consider
location, climate, and materials. You
wouldn’t build an igloo in the rain forest.

3. Ventilation Designs
1. Natural Ventilation
2. Transitional Ventilation
3. Tunnel Ventilation

4. Natural Ventilation
Relies solely on the weather outside to
maintain conditions inside.
Carries the lowest stocking density of birds per
square meter.

5. Transitional
Ventilation
Relies on powered fans to forcefully move air
across the barn.
Controllers are programmed to dictate when
fans run, for how long, and which inlets will
open.
Medium stocking density per square meter.

6. Tunnel Ventilation
Relies on large volumes of air being rapidly
moved by powerful fans from one end of the
barn to the other.
Can be costly to build.
Carry the highest stocking density of birds per
square meter.

7. Ventilation Schemes
• Minimum Ventilation
• Tunnel Ventilation
• Evaporative Cooling

8. Minimum Ventilation
Air movement required to replace stale air with
fresh air, but does not actively cool the birds.

9. Dust and toxic gases must
be kept to a minimum for
optimal performance.
• Ammonia (NH3) < 10 ppm
• Carbon Dioxide (CO2) < 3000 ppm
• Carbon Monoxide (CO) <10 ppm
• Dust < 3 mg/m2
• Moisture (H2O) 45-65%
• Oxygen (O2) > 19.6%

10. Tunnel Ventilation
• Used when the inside temperature is too
high and a cooling effect is needed to keep
birds comfortable.
• Set point = the temperature decided upon
and programmed into the controller that
tells the fans when to run.

11. Wind Chill Effect
• Tunnel ventilation creates a wind chill effect
by rapidly moving air through the barn to
remove body heat from the birds.
• The Limiting Factor: High temperature air
(32-35°C/90-95°F) moving across the birds
does not provide a wind chill effect, and
instead can overheat birds.

12. Evaporative Cooling
• Introduces moisture into the air through
fogging or cool pads. The evaporation of this
moisture removes heat from the air.
• Roughly .5°C reduction in temperature for every
2.5% increase in Rh by evaporative cooling.

13. Cooling
• When one gallon (4 liters) of water
evaporates, it removes 8700 Btu’s of heat
from the air.
• Reducing incoming air temperature
through evaporative cooling makes wind
chill more effective.

14. Cooling
• Birds cool themselves through panting.
• A relative humidity greater than 80% should
be avoided – this leaves the birds room for
cooling themselves through respiration.

15. Have a
question?
• Contact us! We’d be happy to talk to you about
ventilation practices.
• 1-800-998-2526 in the US and Canada
• (+1) 419-678-8731 Internationally
• info@val-co.com
• www.val-co.com