Earlier this year, I took the time to insulate the walls of the chicken coop and cover the insulation with 1/4″ plywood. I had hoped we could go without needing a heater in there in the deep winter, and luckily I was right. With Home Assistant tracking everything to InfluxDB and a Grafana dashboard to keep an eye on it, I can see that when all the doors are closed, it keeps nearly 10 degrees difference inside from out.
Home Assistant even tracks when we open and close the chicken door, so it’s easy to see the difference. The top visualization is tracking the temperature for the coop, pond and outside, the bottom is just the delta. It’s amazing to see the difference, before, we were lucky to stay a few degrees above and the swings were wild and dramatic. Now The drops are slow and even, and when the coop is all closed up, it even gains temperature from the chicken body heat.
I am really curious to see when it gets hot. The sun would get it 15-20 degrees warmer than outside really quickly. Hoping to see that get addressed as well.
