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Barn build journal!

19K views 210 replies 28 participants last post by  Kyleen Drake 
#1 · (Edited)
Day 1 - Today we broke ground! Ok, so it wasn't really dramatic. Just hubby out with his ancient tractor (he bought it from his dad who bought it used like a century ago) ripping up the soil to make the job easier for the first crew. But tomorrow, the big machines come out! Our contractor told us the excavator is coming. This means I temporarily lose my outdoor riding ring because they need the space to get the machinery in and out, and will have to ride at my neighbor's barn where Harley is boarded, but I suppose I can live with that.

The barn will be 32 x 48 and will be divided into two parts: one part will contain four horses stalls; one of which will be closed off as a tack room. The other side of the barn will be for our tractor.

At our contractor's recommendation, we are putting in a full concrete foundation with a frost wall. It's expensive, but we wanted to do this right. However, the inside of the stalls will be left open and filled with aggregate, then rubber mats. There will be a small loft over the stalls. Dutch doors will open out into a paddock and that side of the barn will have a 6-8' overhang (we still have to work out some details relating to trusses).

I hope to chronicle our progress on this thread.
 

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#34 ·
Doing half a dutch door in the stalls for windows, but also doing windows in the double doors at the ends of the barn...to allow as much light in as possible. Will have grids in the windows so the horses don't think it's just an open space. Excited to see them installed. Posts are ready for walls and roof on Wednesday.
 
#40 ·
Pics aren't showing again today (why did HF have to change its look???) so that will have to wait. But while the frost wall cures, they are filling in the base inside and around the wall. The pipe has been laid for water and the electrician is coming today to figure out the layout and decide how they're going to run power from the house to the barn. Right now, load after load of sand is being dumped, spread out and compacted. I was worried about how high up the building seems to sit, but with a gradual slope, it looks fine. And of course it's up that high so no water comes in.

On the flooring front, my contractor gave me some bad news. He feels leaving the stalls open (ie, no concrete in stalls, just aggregate) won't work with the dutch doors. There would be a really big lip for the horses to step out and he worries that this is going to cause structural problems. So I gave the ok to do a full concrete slab. Not ideal, but easier to clean. Given that I hope to let the horses out pretty well 24/7, they shouldn't spend too much time in their stalls. I already have all the rubber mats I need to cover up the concrete. Bedding will be wood pellets - I've heard great things about them and you can pile them in there pretty thick and just take out the soiled stuff. And if I decide the horses are still spending too much time standing on concrete, I can put a wooden sub-floor in each stall. I would cover the stall in hemlock boards and cover those with the rubber mats. A fairly easy job to do ourselves. Heck, as long as I can get hubby to make the cuts (I don't trust myself with power saws), I can install them pretty easily.

It's all about compromises I guess. And I really want my dutch doors leading into the paddock so I'm not prepared to give those up.

Today I have to go pick out the colour of the siding! Our house is all red brick with white trim so I'm thinking classic red barn with white trim and doors. The contractor asked if I wanted colour on the roof. I think I'll just go with silver. I think colour on the roof would be too much. We're also going to re-do the roof on our baby barn while we're at it so whatever colour I pick will go on both. Anyone do a black roof? It would be nice in the winter, but maybe less so in the summer. Does white have any advantages? Might keep things cooler in the summer, but honestly, up here in the great white north, cold winters are a bigger concern than hot summers.
 
#41 ·
To reiterate my post in your horse shopping thread, my "like" button is no longer working:(

1. We had the electric put underground, from the house to the barn. Something to consider:)

2. <sign> all concrete makes sense, structurally ---- I guess -- lol

3. I love a classic red barn. As far as the roof, where I live a light color on the barn is the norm so as to reflect heat. I think it looks "happier" anyway:)

4. What are you doing for lightening rods and grounding if the barn were to be struck by lightening?

5. I haven't tried to upload any pics this week. I guess I'll go over to the Krones & Kodgers (my home thread because I'm at the tail end of 60:(, to see if I can upload anything.
 
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#42 ·
1. Yes, I should have said, electricity will be run underground. Much easier and not that far to go. They are getting a small bucket for the excavator for that purpose since they need it anyway to run the pipes 5 feet underground (so they don't freeze - but just in case, they are using a flexible pipe that won't break if the water does happen to freeze).

Thanks for your suggestion on the light roof. At this point, thinking silver grey (so no colour) is a good neutral colour. And cheaper than colour.

# 4 - thanks for raising that! Will bring it up with my contractor. I have no idea what he was thinking, but I assume he considered this. He's the take-charge contractor type, for better of worse. Not a lot of options around here so we're kind of stuck with him, but truly, I find his work is excellent so far.
 
#43 ·
I've got dutch doors all over & none are butted to concrete & none have shifted anything. There is a header/board at the door opening & the step up is a few inches. If you would have a big step why would concrete vs no concrete make a difference? Grading would solve that. Is your contractor a horse person?
A few boards are way cheaper than concrete & if you have a concrete foundation shouldn't that be enough?
 
#44 ·
I'm sure it's doable to have open stall floors with dutch doors leading outside, but he wasn't comfortable doing that for structural reasons. I'm not an engineer or a contractor so I'm not in a position to argue with him. And to answer your question, no, the contractor is not a horse person. He's built agricultural buildings, but no horse barns. None around here have, and all the other contractors I found were mainly house builders. He was the best one of the bunch since at least he has experience with agricultural buildings. Seems all the horse people around here either convert old cattle barns or just build sheds. Unfortunately, we're stuck with what's available locally. I suppose we could have brought someone in from outside, but that would be a lot more expensive and the advantage of using someone local is that all the materials are being sourced locally. He knows where to get everything.

Lots of people do use concrete as flooring in stalls, but like I said, I could easily add a wooden sub-floor and it's not cost-prohibitive. Keeps everybody happy and doesn't cost much or require much labour. Plus, this way, there is a full concrete slab throughout the building, making it more appealing to someone who might want to use it for storing an RV or boat, should we ever sell the property to non-horsey people.
 
#54 ·
I have chicken wire over the one that ended up being in a horse stall. There is a hole cut in the chicken wire just big enough to get my hand thru.

The other window is over my work counter, so no chicken wire. If it didn't have a screen, I would have bugs hitting me in the face all the time; especially at night when the lights are on and they are trying to fly to the lights.
 
#61 ·
So LOTS going on today!!! They dug a trench 5 feet deep to run the water line (it has to be below frost level) from the house to the barn and are currently drilling a hole in our foundation to bring the pipe in. The electricians are also here drilling another hole in the side of the garage to access the electrical panel.

Picked out the colours for the metal roof and siding yesterday. Hubby and I could not agree on roof colour. He wanted brown to match our house roof (really????). I wanted white to match the trim. So we are compromising and going with gray. The only question is whether we just leave the galvanized steel coating or have it painted with a galvanized steel colour, LOL. Seems a little absurd, but the company that manufactures it offers a 40 year warranty on its painted metal. Nothing is said about warranty on unpainted. The guy at the hardware store who showed me the colours said the unpainted galvanized steel will darken and it will probably happen unevenly. Anyone have experience with this? Should I get it painted? I could go for a nice, light gray coating. That way it would protect the metal and keep a nice, uniform colour throughout. I looked at red metal barns online with dark gray roofs and some with light gray roofs. Hubby likes the dark, I like the light, LOL.
 
#62 ·
If you have two horses that get along fine you can have two stalls opening on to one paddock but if one is a bully it will go into either stall when it chooses and the timid one will always stay outside as it will be afraid of getting penned in one stall and the other horse coming in and beating up on it. I see this happening next door one horse is dominant and goes inside but the timid one will never go in as it is afraid of getting caught in the stall and getting hurt.

If it looks like the two don't get along and one always stays outside, it wouldn't take much to divide the paddock with a strand of electric rope so each horse has access only to his stall and paddock area.

With our two horses, they have a large pen 15 x 36 with a 12 ft door as a run in and they get along just fine in it together, but in the past it has not worked well when one horse is a bully.
 
#63 ·
I've lost track, lol

Have kick boards in the stalls been discussed? Even if the barn exterior is wood, you still need hardwood kick boards, four feet high, from the floor up.

We installed one inch thick rough cut lumber. I went to the sawmill, where they cut the lengths for me. A pickup load was practically free because it was wood they couldn't sell for anything else, anyway.

Kickboards serve a couple safety purposes, where a horse is concerned.

Yes, horses quickly learn which stall is theirs. When I had four horses it was a thing of beauty to watch them line up at the fence, wait for me to holler for them (they wouldn't come for DH, lol), then walk thru the paddock into the barn and go to their respective stalls without any help from me.

They always came in their pecking order, with the alpha first in his stall, getting turned around in time to pin his ears at the number four horse, just because he could, lol
 
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#65 ·
I've lost track, lol

Have kick boards in the stalls been discussed? Even if the barn exterior is wood, you still need hardwood kick boards, four feet high, from the floor up.

We installed one inch thick rough cut lumber. I went to the sawmill, where they cut the lengths for me. A pickup load was practically free because it was wood they couldn't sell for anything else, anyway.

Kickboards serve a couple safety purposes, where a horse is concerned.
Yup. I told the contractor I wanted the stalls done with 2 x 4 rough cut lumber to 6 feet. Do I only need to go four feet?
 
#66 ·
What, all the sudden since hubby gets to put his tractor in there he thinks it's HIS barn? :rofl:
I know right? :icon_rolleyes:

He actually also suggested a green roof. Red barn with green roof. Can you say Xmas tree? Now I know lots of people do this and I don't mean to be rude. I would just prefer not to have too many colours competing where the barn will be pretty close to the house. I feel we should stay within the colour scheme of our red brick house with white trim. The roof of the house is shingled, btw, which is why he thought we should do a brown roof on the barn. Brown shingles are ok, but I'm not putting a brown metal roof on a red barn.

I've also been looking to buy some barn decor for the outside. I'd like to have a nice, classic jumping white horse to put on the front, just above the big roll-up door. Not likely to find anything locally so if anyone has ideas of where I can get that sort of thing, I'm all ears. I may resort to drawing a jumping horse on a piece of sheet metal and bringing it to a local welder we've used for other projects and get him to cut it out. Should be easy enough right? I'm thinking there will probably be scraps left from the roof and siding I could probably use. Then I'd paint it with white Tremclad. I want to hang a huge sign that says HARLEY'S HOUSE on the front too, but I'm pretty sure my husband will shoot down that idea.
 
#69 ·
Trying to like these post, but it's not working. Taking notes on all of this though!

The idea of not dividing the stalls is an intriguing one. Will ponder that. I think that you can just use metal strips on both ends and slide the boards in. That way, it's easy to take apart the wall if I decide I don't need it, and in the event of having to get a horse out that's cast or worse....

And I think I can get rough cut lumber that's not too rough. I can always go over the whole thing with a planer on the inside if I need to, at least for certain areas (tail height). I've read that rough-cut lumber is thicker and more durable because it's not planed down. This way, I'd only plane where it needs to be smooth, leaving the inside of the board rough.
 
#70 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Acadianartist View Post
Yup. I told the contractor I wanted the stalls done with 2 x 4 rough cut lumber to 6 feet. Do I only need to go four feet?

Rough cut lumber will snag tails if nice tails are important to you.
1. If you would have bought The Big Guy, you might want 6 feet. The standard for the average sized riding horse seems to be four feet.




2. True about the tail snagging on rough cut lumber, unless you can talk the lumber mill into planing the lumber to a fairly smooth surface - which is what I did:)
 
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#77 ·
^^^What Drafty said. And they don't work any serious OT unless they have fallen behind due to weather and there might be a penalty clause, or there's a big job waiting as soon as yours is finished.
OT means more moolah, that the contractor may not be able to afford to pay them.
 
#80 ·
Great progress on the barn. Walls are up, trusses are probably going up this afternoon (if the crane is available). Metal roofing has been ordered in a medium gray so that should go on next week. They're going to make me dutch doors for the stalls (ordering pre-made isn't financially advantageous out here). Little adjustments have been necessary (they forgot to leave room for windows in the stalls when they framed those walls, but they're going to cut out openings and re-frame those today), but overall, no big issues.

We're picking up a post-hole digger tonight (borrowed from a horse friend) and starting to put in the cedar posts tonight. We decided to go with round cedar posts from a mill up the road. Untreated. Our logic is that they're easy and cheap to replace (3$ per 8 ft length), not harmful to the environment and locally available. We hope they will last a very long time - cedar has been used by local farmers for hundreds of years so there must be a reason - but if they don't it's real easy to pull one out and put a new one in. We bought an extra 10 posts for that purpose. Top boards (also cedar) will go along the riding arena/dry lot. Electrobraid all around. My hope is that we should have at least one area fenced off by next week and I can start bringing Harley over a little bit at a time.

One of the things that is going to be a challenge is the fact that the back of the barn is up pretty high. Because the land slopes down, the front is fine, just a little above grade, but the back is pretty high up. They've already put some fill back there and are going to bring more to make a gradual slope. I've also requested that they get an extra load of fill and extend the slope a little further out so I can easily dump the manure off the side of the elevated area. Not sure how this is going to impact getting the horses in and out of there. As long as I make it a gradual slope on all sides, so there are no sharp drops, it should be ok right? I don't know what else to do. Any suggestions?
 
#82 ·
the back of the barn is up pretty high. Because the land slopes down, the front is fine, just a little above grade, but the back is pretty high up. They've already put some fill back there and are going to bring more to make a gradual slope. I've also requested that they get an extra load of fill and extend the slope a little further out so I can easily dump the manure off the side of the elevated area. Not sure how this is going to impact getting the horses in and out of there. As long as I make it a gradual slope on all sides, so there are no sharp drops, it should be ok right? I don't know what else to do. Any suggestions?
Have you thought about terracing? I have built retaining walls out of sod that have lasted for decades, and big rocks work great too if you have enough around. Retaining wall blocks are the easiest but also expensive.
 
#81 ·
Plenty of backfill, is all I know.

There is a place on the road below me, that was like that but I think a bigger degree of slope than yours. It was also on the NW side of the barn so, when it iced up the first winter, it stayed iced up --- even on this southern state.

The woman spent a lot of money bringing in ton after ton after ton of fill dirt. It finally got to where it was reasonably safe for the horses.

It ended up the woman's husband passed, she moved and the new owners don't have horses. I don't know how the bank has held up as that was several years back.

I'm not sure if it would make sense to put bedrock down then fill dirt on top or not. It isn't something I've ever had to deal with.
 
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#83 ·
Hmmm.... they pulled out huge rocks from where they dug down - maybe they can use those and put fill on top. I can plant grass and try not to trample it too much (we won't be walking along the sides anyway) for stability. I'm thinking that when we ride in the riding arena/dry lot, we'll probably just use the dutch doors to walk right out anyway. Easier than having to go through a gate. The only other option would be to walk through the tractor bay area out the front. I am having double doors put in between the two areas (which are walled off from each other) so you could potentially walk right through there.

It looks like the land is pretty level, but when you put a 48 ft building on it, what looks like a very gradual incline becomes a 4 ft drop at the back.

Because of all these slopes along the back (and back sides) of the building, I'm not sure where I'll wash the horses. I want to set up an area where I can put in a a hitching post and bring a hose from the house. Maybe on the side closest to the house and along the front end of the building. It would be a convenient place to tie up. Good place for DH to set up a pressure washer for his stuff too. Maybe we should put an outside spigot there. It would be cold water only (that's why I want to run a hose from the hose in the summer when I want warm water for bathing - Harley hates cold water right out of the hose!), but ok for rinsing off legs, etc.
 
#85 ·
I guess my main consideration would be how difficult you think it might be to keep your embankment from eroding. If it's part of your sacrifice area you certainly won't be able to use any kind of turf to hold it together. I don't think a couple of 2' high retaining walls would present much of a safety issue -- I prefer my horses to have some geographical challenges in their pasture so they're not facing them for the first time when I'm out on the trail.
 
#86 ·
Is the slope coming out of the barn steep enough that humans have to brace themselves to go down it? Especially after a good rain?

If so, it is a big concern when it slicks up from rain or ices up in the winter.

It doesn't need leveled out but it needs tapered to where it isn't a safety issue for the horses.
 
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#87 ·
We haven't got all the fill in yet so hard to say. I would prefer that it not be so steep obviously. It might also be a good idea to put a ramp on the back over the mounded dirt as a way to prevent too much erosion. I see those in most barns around here and we have a ramp coming out of our baby barn so there isn't a ledge there when we drive the ATV in and out. The ramp would only be over the first part of the slope which could be made to go down very gradually (since I wanted to extend it out to my manure pile anyway). I think we can do it, but it will require a lot of fill and close attention. And probably additional fill over time. Sucks, but there really wasn't any way around it. If the back entrance gets really dangerous for the horses, I'll just walk them out through the stalls or out the front entrance, which is closer to ground level.
 
#88 ·
Joel's idea of stepping the slope is a lot safer than a ramp, for the horses, IMO.

The downside to stepping is getting a dump cart or a manure spreader in the barn but it can be done, if the tractor is 4-wheel drive or you use a 4-wheeler.
 
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#89 ·
Walls are up (I mean framed, not finished of course) and they put the trusses on yesterday! It was pretty cool - they used a crane because the building is 18 feet tall. Next week the metal goes on the roof!

Weather has been drizzly and miserable, so the construction crew will be glad to be working under cover.

I looked at the drop at the back and it's not as bad as I thought. About 3 feet from the bottom of the door to ground level. There's already a couple of loads of sand, but they're going to bring in gravel, then cover it with top soil. I think it will be fine - though I had a look at what my neighbor did because they have a slight drop on one side. They used railway ties on the sides to avoid too much soil running off. The trick will be to get grass to grow there this summer. Once it takes hold, it should be ok, but we'll have to be careful using that entrance for the first couple of months. Maybe I should lay a rubber mat down over the dirt? Just to avoid the horses hooves squishing down into the soft dirt.

Going to have similar issues with the entrances to the dutch doors. The drop is a little less, but there is still an incline, which is currently just sand. Now the dutch doors lead into my riding arena so I may get them to dump a thick layer of sand all over anyway, which will reduce the drop even further on that side. But clearly, having sand in front of the dutch doors is not going to work very well. I've read of people using hog fuel (large mulch, basically) in heavy traffic areas. Any other thoughts?

This thread would be far more interesting if I could post pictures :(
 
#90 ·
Let me see if I can link to photobucket pics...

Today, they finished putting the wood on the roof so it's ready for the metal. They are also finishing up my 24 ft x 13 ft loft. They think they will be able to finish it easily by the end of the month. Biggest concern is getting the fill in, because the roads are still soft and dump trucks were only running half loads. Contractor wants to wait for them to be able to run full loads because it's cheaper. Until they're finished bringing in fill, we can't finish the paddock area that will be attached to the side of the barn. But I'm very pleased with the progress so far!

Oh, and I ended up with a 10 ft overhang over the dutch doors so that's great!

Barn build 042.jpg Photo by Gallery_Chantal | Photobucket
 
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