Every winter when we look out of the upstairs windows into the back garden we notice the same thing, our aviary only has frost on one half of it!
My wife lovingly owns a small flock of budgies and keep a heater in the internal part of the aviary to keep the temperature above freezing. The problem is at this time of year it is always on and the evidence of this is on the frost-free part of the roof!
So I decided it would be a good idea to try and insulate the roof so that we hopefully won't use up as much energy.
Here's how the ceiling looked before I started. Other than some spider webs, no insulation at all!
I started attaching sheets of basic insulating material to the walls and ceiling. The material is ThermoWrap from Wickes;
ThermoWrap - Wickes
I am now adding a layer of slatted wood panels over the top of the insulation to try and keep the heat in. It's not finished yet, but we noticed that there was much more frost on that part of the roof the following morning so it must be working already!
Another problem I noticed with the aviary is that the wood chippings used on the floor tend to get stuck to our shoes and so wood chippings have been spread all over the floor in the garden. So while doing this work, I decided to buy a mat to try and capture these chippings before making it on to the ground. In the end I bought a Rubber Swarf Mat from First Mats
Rubber Swarf Mat - First Mats
I had to trim the edge on the mat but other than that it was a perfect fit. As you can see from the picture, it's working really well too!
I'll post a couple more pictures when it's finished over the weekend. If anyone has suggestions for how to improve on this, let me know!