Metal building for horse barns and stables Jackson Ms

construction of  metal building to be used for horse stable and horse barn in Jackson Ms
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Custom Horse barn and stable 601 750 2274

When it comes to barns, horse owners know exactly what they want. For example, William Rudolph of Morton Buildings in Lake Wales, Fla., says a horse owner came to his office with a picture of a barn she saw in South Africa.

“She knew what she wanted,” Rudolph says. “She wanted living quarters in it. She wanted 14-15 stalls, a tack room, a feed room, an office and a lot of unique features.”

The final design took a lot of back and forth with drawings and suggestions, but Rudolph says that in this case the process was made a little easier because she was a Morton owner in another location. She knew what Morton could do and she trusted the representatives to deliver a quality product that also fit her original vision. Apparently, the owner and Morton Buildings were on the same page for this project because it won the 2010 NFBA award for Horse Barns/Facilities (3,000-10,000 square feet).

Horse barn builders walk a delicate line when working with horse owners. As Rudolph explains, the horses are like children to the owners, so there may be some passionate feelings in play. And horse owners, like anyone building a dream project, are going to have very definite ideas about what the final building should look like. However, the builders have to balance the horse owner’s passion with some hard realities — like the cost of materials and making sure the barn is safe and comfortable for the horses.

Calamos Stall Barn

“The good points and the challenges when working with horse owners are often the same thing,” says Sean Marcotte, with Morton Buildings in Houston. “They are all different. Sometimes they have trainers involved in the design. No two people are going to have the same concept.” In other words, while it is fun to work with the different personalities and the ideas they have, getting multiple people to agree on something can be a challenge.

For that reason, Marcotte recommends the horse owners he works with to visit other barns, especially barns that have been around for a few years. It gives the owners a chance to see what ideas work, what ideas probably won’t work, as well as how the barns perform. Also, encourage the owners to visit existing barns in different kinds of weather. Seeing the need for good ventilation is better than trying to explain the need, for example.

Ten Oaks Polo

Don Ross, with the Naperville, Ill., Morton Buildings office, has found most of the horse owners he works with are women. The women tend to be more detail oriented, Ross says, so it is important to listen very carefully. “You have to be prepared to take a lot of notes,” he says. He, too, directs the owners to other barns similar to their plans and then he comes up with a design to present.

All three men agree that one of the positive aspects to working with the horse owners who come to them is that the owners appreciate post-frame construction and the building aesthetics. “In Florida, the mentality is often toward concrete block or steel,” says Rudolph. “But concrete doesn’t give you the flexibility and it tends to hold moisture. Steel will start rusting in our climate. Wood provides better options.”

Horse owners will often come with ideas that the builders may never have thought about trying before. On his award-winning building (above), Rudolph says a pergola was added. “That’s the first one I ever did. It was all the owner’s idea.”

Marcotte appreciates the passion horse owners bring to the project. “It’s great to see how passionate they are about their animals and then to see the sense of pride they have when you come to the end of the project and they know this is where their horses will live. They send you pictures of their horses in the barn and it’s a really good feeling to have been a part of it.”

He, too, won a 2010 NFBA award for Horse Barns/Facilities (under 3,000 square feet). The barn needed to incorporate certain looks. “A lot of the horse communities here in Texas are deed restrictive and the subdivisions have rules on what the exterior must look like,” he says.

It’s one thing to develop a exterior that fits into the neighborhood. It’s a whole other issue coming up with a plan that is right for the horses. And that is the biggest challenge when working with horse owners — and the builders will always come down on the side of the horses, even if it means walking away from a project.

Ventilation issues appear to be the biggest obstacle between builder and owner, particularly when the owner doesn’t see the need to provide proper ventilation for the barn. Sometimes the problem is a relatively new horse owner who thinks horses are like house-bound pets and that the barn has to be built similarly to a home.

“We had someone who felt the barn needed to be insulated and kept at a warm temperature inside,” says Ross. “But that meant the building wouldn’t have the ventilation it needed. The owner was convinced that was what she wanted to do and we weren’t going to do it.”

Calamos Stall Barn

One of Ross’s horse barn projects placed second in the Horse Barn/Facilities category (3,000-10,000 square feet). While such high-end projects come to a beautiful and impressive end result, designing a barn that mixes the owners ideas with what the owner is willing to pay can create its own challenges. It’s not unusual for the costs to be more than anticipated, Ross says, so the builder has to gently encourage the owner scale back their dreams.

“We appreciate the ideas the owners bring to us and we try to make them work,” Marcotte adds. Unfortunately, not all of those ideas will be feasible, either because of building costs or design logistics or for animal safety. “You can nip those potential issues in the bud if you discuss them right up front.”

In the end, the builders approach horse barn building like Rudolph. “I enjoy working with horse people. They challenge us to find the range of what we can do.”

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Horse barn and stables Jackson Ms 601 750 2274

Recommendations to keep horses and customers happy /

Proper horse barn ventilation can be difficult to wrap your head around. What’s good for you is not necessarily good for horses. Here are some recommendations for natural ventilation in your horse barn projects.

Permanent openings
• Furnish stalls with some sidewall openings that are permanently open year-round

• The best location for this permanent opening is at the eave, where sidewall meets roof

• A slot opening along the eave, that runs the entire length of the stable, provides every stall with fresh air since air is equally distributed down the length and on both sides of the stable

• Since a slot opening at the eave is 10-12 feet above the floor, incoming cold air is mixed and tempered with stable air before reaching the horse

• During cold weather a long slot opening admits a thin sheet of cold fresh air, rather than the large drafty mass of cold air admitted by an open window or door

• A minimum guideline for cold climates is to provide at least 1 inch of continuous-slot, permanent opening for each 10 feet of building width

• Supply each stabled horse the equivalent of at least 1 square foot of opening into its stall

• For a 12-foot-wide stall, a 1-inch-wide continuous slot will supply 1 square foot (144 square inches) of permanent opening

• Openings which are slightly above the minimum recommendation can help ensure good ventilation during cold and cool conditions when other stable openings are often kept closed

• If ridge venting is insufficient, double the eave vent opening sizes

• Eave openings ideally should be left completely open; covering them with insect screening or metal soffit treatments severely restricts airflow and will soon clog with dust and chaff

• In double-aisle stables where central stalls are not near a fresh-air opening (or when stables share a common sidewall with an indoor riding arena), the stable interior must have an open design with no ceiling and with grillwork on stall walls

Seasonal openings
• In stables with interior central aisles, large endwall doors can be opened to allow cooling breezes during warmer weather

• When horses are kept indoors during warm weather, allow breezes to enter the horse stall with windows or doors that open from the stall to the outside

• Provide openings equivalent to at least 5 to 10 percent of the floor area in each stall

• For a 12×12-foot box stall, a 3×2½ window provides a 5 percent opening and a 4×3½ window (or top of Dutch door) provides a 10 percent opening

Ridge vent
• The ridge opening area should match the eave opening area with a minimum of 1 square foot of opening per horse

• As with eave openings, ridge openings should provide at least 1 inch of continuous slot opening per 10 feet of building width

• If no ridge opening is provided, double the minimum recommended eave opening

• The simplest and most effective ridge vent is an unprotected opening, where trusses or rafters are protected from precipitation and the stable interior can tolerate occasional rain entry

• The ridge vent can be a continuous opening or a series of uniformly spaced vent assemblies

• During winter a portion of the vents can be closed to provide only the recommended permanent opening area, and then opened during hot weather when more air exchange is needed

• Do not cover ridge openings with insect screens, and avoid residential and commercial ridge vent assemblies that are overly restrictive to air movement

• Ridge vent assemblies made for agricultural buildings offer relatively unrestricted airflow with modest protection from precipitation

• Since warm moist air flows up and is not inclined to move down to exit a ridge vent assembly, avoid designs that prevent natural upward flow when no wind is blowing; trapped air blocks ventilation and may condense in cold weather

• The actual ridge opening is measured at the most restrictive part of the ridge vent assembly, so that the key measurement for air movement is where the airflow path is narrowest

• Cupolas can be used as ridge openings but provide no way for stable air to move through them, while louvers commonly block 50 percent of the open area they are protecting

The breathable wall
• Traditional barn board siding provides a “breathable wall” with miles of small cracks between the boards that allow bits of air movement at each juncture

• Air coming in the cracks is nicely uniform throughout the structure, while the tiny air jets are quickly dissipated without becoming drafty

• This effect is reduced when battens added to the wall, and eliminated when tongue-and-groove siding or modern 4×8 (or larger) construction panels are used

• Stables can be built with a breathable wall concept by spacing vertical barn boards 1/4 inch to 1 inch from each other, or using roughcut green lumber siding that leaves gaps once it dries
Three ways to improve
ventilation

• Open grillwork on the top portion of front and side stall partitions is highly recommended versus solid stall partitions

• When the interior has no ceiling and is open to the ridge vent, more air exchange and distribution can occur

• Do not incorporate overhead hay and bedding storage in the stable, or at least construct the storage over the work aisle so that horse stalls have no ceiling

Measuring ventilation rates
• Measure the velocity of air entering or leaving the stable through ventilation openings and multiply this by the opening size

• Air velocity is measured with an anemometer (in feet per minute) and multiplied by the opening area (in square feet) to get the ventilation rate in cubic feet per minute

• To calculate air changes per hour, divide the ventilation rate by the building air volume

• The stable volume is the floor square footage multiplied by the average roof or ceiling height

• Measure the incoming ventilation air speed at several openings and at several locations on large openings, then average the velocities and multiply by the open area of airflow

• The primary difficulty in accurately estimating natural wind-blown ventilation rates is the frequent change of air speed and direction at each ventilation opening as measurements are made.

 

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