Thanks for the help on the floor - lets talk doors

Thanks for all the feedback on how to floor a horse barn. Seemed like a rather contraversial subject though. Since I don't have any horses (yet) I can probably think a bit more about the floor.

Now I'd like input on doors and windows. Again, assuming a horse (they are likely the biggest critter I would have to accomodate) what are good door dimensions for the stalls, entrance doors and so on?

I think windows are nice for light and ventilation. What heigh should they be placed (i.e. how high up from the floor).

This is going to be a modest barn (40' x 25'), and I'd like to get it mostly right. It seems that in most of the free plans, doors & the like are up to the builder.

Thnaks in advance

Most people go 4' OC for the posts on either side of the door. This gives 4' minus the width of the post. This usually provides a good opening size for use with a 4' wide sliding door.

Horses love windows, especially if they open. They should be covered with a steel (or AL) grill (a barred grill like used on stall fronts) to keep the horses from the windows. It's much easier to get the grills first, then get some cheapo sliding windows the right size to work with the grills. Planning ahead before you build will save you the hassle of having to have custom window grills made. The other option for window grills are the non-welded kits that can be trimmed to size with a sawz-all. We actually did the later and it worked out pretty well. It was easy to trim the width and we didn't have to trim the height (but you could trim every bar if you wanted). I'll try and take a picture and put it up next week (the wife is away w/ the camera). Our windows are 3x3 and about 4' off the ground. A lot of people go w/ the 3x4 wide and that also looks good.

>I'd like to get it mostly right. It seems that in most of the free plans, doors & the like are up to the builder.

I found he best thing is to go around and look at a ton of barns and talk to people about what they like and dislike. The main thing with horses is that everything should be very heavy duty and very safe for the horses (no small protruding objects).

We put an opening window in each stall, 4 x 4. Used 1/2 sheet of 3/4 plywood, then bounded it with 2x4 fram arounf the perimiter and an x pattern in the middle. Two hinges allow the whole thing to swing open and let the horses stick their heads out when stall bound. I'd make them at least 4 feet off the ground, much less and a big horse could actually think they could jump out and may try!!

Thats an interesting solution, especially since you are in upstate NY. This is going to sound like a stupid question, but do you have to heat horse barn? I'm right near Toronto, and I think our winters are milder than yours, and I wouldn't think you have to keep a horse warm during the winter.

Plus, a 4x4 plywood 'window' is not going to get broken by the average horse!

Now 'tall' should the door ways be. I'm guessing 8 feet?

Glass windows are nice if you do not keep an open barn in the winter. They let light in and let the horses look out without letting in the sub zero wind. I live in Southern New England and the winters here are bad enough. I would guess they are much worse in Toronto.

The barn doesn't have to be heated for the horses, they don't really care. It is more important to keep their water a little on the warm side so they are encouraged to keep hydrated. Any water that sits to long in the cold of winter will drop pretty quickly to the freezing point. Horses will drink this cold water, but not as much as they should. Dehydration increases the risk of colic. A hot water heater (and a heated utility room for it) in a barn is a wonderful thing all year round.

Our barn is not heated but we have a kerosene rocket heater we use for our own comfort. Whenever we go up there and it's really cold we turn it on and it's feeling much better in 5-10 minutes. You'd be amazed how cold a barn stays once the cold really sets in and the floor freezes. The kerosene heater is really great for taking the edge off [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

Actually, I suspect Toronto is warmer than where you are. I used to live in Montreal (talk about cold!) and it seems that its almost always a fair bit warmer here in winter.

That's a good suggestion about the water & windows. I read elsewhere that heated water bowels are the ticket. I seem to remember that those are self filling, which brings up antoher question: how do you keep the water pipes from freezing in an unheated barn? I guess plastic piping is the name of the game, but I would think the water would eventually freeze anyway.

Its funny, my wife & kids have left all kinds of 'how to build a barn' books all over the house, and these details seem to be missing ....

>I guess plastic piping is the name of the game, but I would think the water would eventually freeze anyway.

You don't, unless you have some complicated self-drainage scheme or compressor to clear the lines.

>Its funny, my wife & kids have left all kinds of 'how to build a barn' books all over the house, and these details seem to be missing ....

That's very typical. I once saw a small tractor review in a horse magazine that said to make sure you get a mid-PTO on your tractor because you can't have a loader without it. A lot of these people know plenty about horses, but that doesn't mean they know much about barns or equipment, especially if they never pickup as much as a pitchfork.

Don't heat the barn but as stated not a problem for the horses. Just getting them out of the wind is fine for them. We do have heated water buckets which are the best things we ever bought. No more busting ice out of buckets and, as stated, better for the horses cause they drink more. We also have glass windows for light since when the dutch doors are closed they don't let any light in. Basement type windows that open out from the bottom work well since you can put bars on the inside to prtoect the glass from the horses but still open them from the inside to let in some air. Also keeps out even a driving rain while still letting in some air. The self waterers you refered to have pros and cons. If I had 20 stalls they'd be nice. Downside is unless you also spring for meters you can't track when a horse stops drinking (early sign of problems). With only a few horses adding water to the buckets will be the least of your chores, lets you monitor intake, and you don't have to worry about frozen pipes. The heated buckets only draw 40 watts and have a built in thermostat that keeps the water at 50deg.

>Downside is unless you also spring for meters you can't track when a horse stops drinking (early sign of problems).

Excellent point, I forgot about that.

We also skipped the auto-filling buckets because of that (not seeing how much they drink), but I sure would like to get the heated buckets.

We managed to find some 10qt flat-sided buckets and used two in a stall and they are much easier to lift. These are not standard sizes. The bigger buckets are very heavy to lift; we dump out the previous day's water and wash out the buckets every morning. Sometimes there is a full bucket of water and it is very heavy for some people. We would like to get more of these smaller buckets, but for now we would rather use more buckets, partially full, than fewer buckets totally full. We use the bucket clips that screw onto the wall and have a little plastic snap tab on them that keep the horses from throwing the buckets around, but they are a minor pain when taking the buckets off, especially heavy buckets.

We bought this farm from a guy who bought it from a dairy farmer. The stalls are all different sizes and there are several different configurations. I'm not going to tell you which is better but I like having a stall door that is not all the way on one side or another of the stall, so when you open the door, you can have the grain and/or water buckets just inside the door for easy access (you don't have to go in). This is handy when horses are ornery, and its faster. If I had all the money in the world, I'd start by getting those stall wall panels with the swing out feeders - easy access from the aisle. Some of our horses have a combination hay rack/grain bin on the wall. One horse uses it, the other immediately pulls out the hay onto the floor (so we gave up on him). So these things don't always keep things cleaner.

Back to doors - we have sliding doors, and I wish we had dutch doors, because 1) sliding the door open covers up the wall next to it, where we could have put a blanket rack or halter hanger, or whatever, and 2) we want to let our horses look out into the aisle for curiosity / socializing, but with sliding doors, we have to use stall guards/chains across the doorway, which are not going to hold a horse back as well as the bottom of a dutch door.