Product news: Fabric building is key to controlling moisture

Elmview Farms Inc., Wallenstein, Ont., has been supplying commercial and residential customers in the Waterloo region and surrounding areas with high-quality compost for more than 20 years. Over the years, management realized that they needed to make some changes to their operations to accommodate their continued growth.

“We wanted to get our product under a roof and our old location didn’t allow for that,” said Colin Horst, partner at Elmview Farms.

The company decided on a 150-foot-wide by 234-foot-long fabric structure from Britespan Building Systems of Ontario to produce and store its final compost product.

“We like the clearance and the height the Genesis building gave us, Horst said. “The clear span interior gives us room to operate our excavator and keeps the excess moisture off our product.,

Elmview Farms said it strives to be the best in its business and produce top quality mulch, topsoil and compost to its customers. With moisture being a key component in the decomposition process of creating compost, the building plays an important role in helping Elmview Farms achieve its goals of superior quality products.

“Ever since we started storing the mulch in building, it allows us to give a more consistent product to our customers,” Horst said. “We can control the moisture, we can add moisture and we can keep it at the right moisture until we sell it to the customer.

He said Elmview Farms plans add another Britespan fabric building to its site soon.

“The next structure we’re building will have raised floors where we’ll have a row of fans providing forced air to add oxygen to the mixture to further speed up composting times,” he said. “Currently, the whole process takes about nine months. With the next building we’re adding we prospect it will cut the process down to five or six months.”

The composting facility was built in a fraction of the time compared to a conventional building and had some tight completion deadlines to contend with. “We found Britespan very easy to work with,” Horst said. “They always kept us up to date on the process. We know we gave them a tight deadline to meet, however, they met it and now we’re in business.”