Backwoods_Bob
01-15-2007, 10:26 AM
Hey y'all -
Been a while since I posted.
In the past I've written about our little off grid backwoods homestead and the staw bale cottage my wife and I built.
Our latest project is this barn -
As I got a digital camera for christmas I thought I'd share a bit.
This barn was designed to house two horses and a few milk goats.
It needed to also hold a long winters supply of feed, and it was very important that it be designed in such a way as to minimize the amount of work associated with the daily chores associated with keeping such animals, not add to the burden.
For me, the last meant that it must have a hay loft for the convenient storage and feeding of the animals, and an area dedicated to milking, and a small area for tool and tack storage.
I know to many folk ho have hay stored outside under tarps, or in a building several hundred feet from the animals. Some folk have separate milking parlors.
I wanted none of that.
It needed to be as easy as possible to build, and use only the tools we had on hand and the skills we already possessed because no labor other than my own and my wife's would go into the building of it.
It needed to have enough windows for light inside, because we're off grid. I didn't want a gloomy interior.
It needed to hold up to tremendous snow loads.
Perhaps above all else, it needed to be cheap, too!
What we came up with is this rustic looking building. The bottom half is 22' wide and 24' long. The top part is 24'x24', giving a foot overhang on the sides.
One side will house two 10'x12' horse stalls.
A six foot isle runs from the front of the building to the goats stall in the back.
The goat stall is L shaped. The back 12' x 6' area is raised up almost a foot with dirt and bedding.
The lower 6' x 6' area faces the feeder.
The four animals currently living here seem to like the arrangement.
The feeder opens into another 6' x 6' bay which is where the ladder to the loft is located, and this space will also be used to hold tools and tack.
The last 6' x 6' bay is for milking.
On the sides it has full length plastic panels up high enough so as not to be damaged by animals ( hopefully ) and covered by the overhang so as not to be covered with snow. They have worked out great, and admit a great deal of light.
It was my wifes' idea to build it against a bank, so we could walk right into the second story hay loft.
It is quite nice to be able to back a pickup right up to the door and just throw the hay in!
The design of the back wall was, for us, the biggest design problem. I didn't want to pour a huge concrete wall because of the difficulty and cost involved.
Many ideas were tossed about, and we decided to dry stack blocks and fill them with concrete by hand, one coffee can at a time.
The rest of the structure is an ordinary pole building, supported by a great many cedar logs I cut from my property.
The longest span under the hay loft is only ten feet.
All the poles also gives us plenty of uprights to connect interior framing to.
It is sided with old rough cut 1" boards, tar paper and old metal roofing.
The roof is made of new metal, new OSB, old salvaged tar paper and most of the 2x4s used for the trusses are new.
Total cost was a bit over 3,000 bucks, not counting the excavating.
Been a while since I posted.
In the past I've written about our little off grid backwoods homestead and the staw bale cottage my wife and I built.
Our latest project is this barn -
As I got a digital camera for christmas I thought I'd share a bit.
This barn was designed to house two horses and a few milk goats.
It needed to also hold a long winters supply of feed, and it was very important that it be designed in such a way as to minimize the amount of work associated with the daily chores associated with keeping such animals, not add to the burden.
For me, the last meant that it must have a hay loft for the convenient storage and feeding of the animals, and an area dedicated to milking, and a small area for tool and tack storage.
I know to many folk ho have hay stored outside under tarps, or in a building several hundred feet from the animals. Some folk have separate milking parlors.
I wanted none of that.
It needed to be as easy as possible to build, and use only the tools we had on hand and the skills we already possessed because no labor other than my own and my wife's would go into the building of it.
It needed to have enough windows for light inside, because we're off grid. I didn't want a gloomy interior.
It needed to hold up to tremendous snow loads.
Perhaps above all else, it needed to be cheap, too!
What we came up with is this rustic looking building. The bottom half is 22' wide and 24' long. The top part is 24'x24', giving a foot overhang on the sides.
One side will house two 10'x12' horse stalls.
A six foot isle runs from the front of the building to the goats stall in the back.
The goat stall is L shaped. The back 12' x 6' area is raised up almost a foot with dirt and bedding.
The lower 6' x 6' area faces the feeder.
The four animals currently living here seem to like the arrangement.
The feeder opens into another 6' x 6' bay which is where the ladder to the loft is located, and this space will also be used to hold tools and tack.
The last 6' x 6' bay is for milking.
On the sides it has full length plastic panels up high enough so as not to be damaged by animals ( hopefully ) and covered by the overhang so as not to be covered with snow. They have worked out great, and admit a great deal of light.
It was my wifes' idea to build it against a bank, so we could walk right into the second story hay loft.
It is quite nice to be able to back a pickup right up to the door and just throw the hay in!
The design of the back wall was, for us, the biggest design problem. I didn't want to pour a huge concrete wall because of the difficulty and cost involved.
Many ideas were tossed about, and we decided to dry stack blocks and fill them with concrete by hand, one coffee can at a time.
The rest of the structure is an ordinary pole building, supported by a great many cedar logs I cut from my property.
The longest span under the hay loft is only ten feet.
All the poles also gives us plenty of uprights to connect interior framing to.
It is sided with old rough cut 1" boards, tar paper and old metal roofing.
The roof is made of new metal, new OSB, old salvaged tar paper and most of the 2x4s used for the trusses are new.
Total cost was a bit over 3,000 bucks, not counting the excavating.