2 women are building a horse run-in, can you give a little advice?

[loribt]

Are you doing 14 x 14? 14x 20 would be better. No matter how friendly they are, one will be dominant and will be trying to scoot away from the other one. Two horses need room to maneuver, and the doorway needs to accommodate two horses going through at the same time. 8-10'. Also if you are walking in there with them, you need to think about your space so that you don't get knocked about if one starts to rush, or kicks out. Two entrances on the ends allow one to come in and the other to leave so that there is no bottleneck. I've had 3 horses in a 30 x 15 turn out and that is tight, but with three doors was workable. 14x14 makes a nice box stall for a single horse.

Good luck

A 14 x 20 would be great, but I don't have enough treated 2x8's for her to go that big. She can't afford to pay the price for new 2x8 boards to go any bigger. I had enough for her to do 14x14 with just a few left over for me in case I might need a few at my home for some repairs down the road. Hopefully there won't be any problems...both of her horses are on the smaller side and get along great...At my farm, my own horses will go into one stall when they don't have to....I've had 4 of them go into a 12x12 stall and just stand there all together, they do it all the time when they have their own stalls...but I do get what you are saying...not all horses get along as well as ours seem to.

 

[GLyford]

Another option for roofing is currogated plastic roof panels from the home center.

Most come in 2x8' and 2x12', and you can overlap the ends for longer distances. I'm guessing it would take about 14 2x8 panels to cover your roof, and you'd have enough length for a good overlap and maybe a bit of an overhang. You also don't need to attach them to plywood, instead you put 2x4's crosswise on your rafters and attach them to that. Suntuf, Palruf, and Tuftex are brand names, some of the panels are UV-protected but cost a little more. Total cost would probably be similar to OSB+shingles, and the panels would be lighter and easier to put up. They use a special screw with a rubber gasket, usually sold in the same aisle.

I've not had good luck with the tarpaper panels like ondura.

 

[loribt]

Update on our progress: First, I want to thank everyone for their ideas and suggestions. It has all been very helpful. Well, we had the holes dug and all the 12' posts are set in the ground. Got off just a little on a couple of the holes and had to use the post hole diggers to make the adjustments, but got it done yesterday. Used rebar and concreted them in so they should hold tight. So far, so good. We plan to start nailing on the boards next week. That will take us longer because we have to cut each board as we are ready to nail because they are used and we are cutting off the ends that have old nail holes in them and measuring to fit. I'm sure I'll be asking more questions the closer we get to the top.....Thanks again.

 

[tcreeley]

I've used a lot of green roughcut- cheaper than planed kiln dried. Above 4 ft switch to rough cut 1x6 to fill in siding as a cheaper alternative. I just use PT where it contacts the bedding and near the ground.
Using green roughcut- nailing a 20 penny nail you have to watch out for the sap hitting you in the eye! Never had a problem working with green wood. I've also bought a lift (1000'brdft) of 1x6 #5 pine and picked through it for the good boards, and cut to lengths as I needed to.

Good luck!

 

[loribt]

I've used a lot of green roughcut- cheaper than planed kiln dried. Above 4 ft switch to rough cut 1x6 to fill in siding as a cheaper alternative. I just use PT where it contacts the bedding and near the ground.
Using green roughcut- nailing a 20 penny nail you have to watch out for the sap hitting you in the eye! Never had a problem working with green wood. I've also bought a lift (1000'brdft) of 1x6 #5 pine and picked through it for the good boards, and cut to lengths as I needed to.

Good luck!

The treated 2x8's we are using are ones I had left from a board fence we took down. She's only paying $3.00 each for each board, new they are almost $8.00 each plus tax here at our local Home Depot, so she is getting a good deal. I like your idea though....that would be a great way to go to save money, plus you really don't need that heavy duty lumber over 4 feet. I'll remember that.

 

[tcreeley]

Thanks for the response...I know, I was concerned about the 3 foot depth in front too, so maybe we should return them and get longer ones for the front wall.. then they could be buried about a foot deeper, and there would be more slope too. Only reason we wanted to partially bury the bottom board was to help prevent rain or thawing snow from running into the shed. We did that around our barn at home and it has worked for us....I will leave that up to her. If she would rather not partially bury it to prevent any rotting, then we will do whatever she wants...and the PT lumber, it's what we have had stored for a few years, previously used for corrals that we took down, never had a problem with the horses chewing on it, and she can't afford anything else. So at this time, it's that lumber to build the horse shed, or no shed at all. And thank you for the advice on the other option to prevent uplift. Driving the rebar through at the bottom of the posts makes sense.

To prevent water from melt running into the interior you need two things- sloping ground all around the barn, and the interior ground floor height has to be higher than the exterior ground height. Where the snow slides off the roof- this presents a real issue. The melt, dripping roof will flow down the snow bank back into the interior unless there is a good slope away. Also where the horses go in and out, their steps will drive the frost deeper into the ground- potential heaving of posts. In addition, where they go in and out, the bedding, snow, ice buildup will create a mound that will serve to backflow moisture into the interior. Good slope and higher interior flooring is the key.

 

[loribt]

To prevent water from melt running into the interior you need two things- sloping ground all around the barn, and the interior ground floor height has to be higher than the exterior ground height. Where the snow slides off the roof- this presents a real issue. The melt, dripping roof will flow down the snow bank back into the interior unless there is a good slope away. Also where the horses go in and out, their steps will drive the frost deeper into the ground- potential heaving of posts. In addition, where they go in and out, the bedding, snow, ice buildup will create a mound that will serve to backflow moisture into the interior. Good slope and higher interior flooring is the key.

Thanks for your response. Hope we have that issue covered. We picked the highest and most level spot in the pasture. Plus she will be having some additional dirt brought in when we are done to put in the interior to build it up some more. She has a small lean-to in another lower pasture and that is her biggest complaint, the melting snow and/or rain water seems to run down into that area so she has a problem keeping that lean-to as dry as she would like when the weather is bad. We are hoping that the horses will start using this new shed most of the time, the ground is so much higher, the shed is bigger, hoping it turns out good for her. We also added extra concrete to the hole for the front center post, knowing that the horses will probably rub against it or maybe even lean against it so it has extra support. Plus, we made the front opening larger so her two horses could actually fit through the one opening without any problem if that actually happened. So, the front is 14' wide, with an 8 foot opening and a 6 foot partial wall that they can get behind if the weather is extremely bad or they want to get in total shade. Funny, they will want to go into a lean-to instead of standing in the shade under a nice big tree.....

 

[whistlepig]

You might want to consider building up your floor with gravel like we did. We used "chips and dust" gravel. This is also called "crush and run" gravel. We rented a vibratory compactor to compact the gravel and then laid rubber horse mats over this gravel. This is a durable and very easy to clean floor in our run in shed. This set up has worked for 4 years now with 5 horses. We had a problem with the horses chewing the edges of the wood in our run in shed. We bought some aluminum angle iron at the hardware store and screwed this on the edges of the wood that they were chewing.

 

[loribt]

You might want to consider building up your floor with gravel like we did. We used "chips and dust" gravel. This is also called "crush and run" gravel. We rented a vibratory compactor to compact the gravel and then laid rubber horse mats over this gravel. This is a durable and very easy to clean floor in our run in shed. This set up has worked for 4 years now with 5 horses. We had a problem with the horses chewing the edges of the wood in our run in shed. We bought some aluminum angle iron at the hardware store and screwed this on the edges of the wood that they were chewing.

Great Ideas.....thanks..My friend is on a real tight budget, don't know if she can afford the little extras right now, but I will save all this info for her and if she has any problems like the horses chewing on the wood, the aluminum angle iron is a good solution.

 

[whistlepig]

The sheds are well worth the trouble. We do have a nice horse barn but our horses much prefer our run in shed. We have been fortunate enough to offer them both options and the experience to know the difference.