100% Urban Predator proof Chicken Run

Our hot tape runs at about 9.9 j! I never plan to contact it! Mary

so first set back in the project!

I feel so stupid but I've never put a roof on in my life and I started that this weekend and it rained Tuesday and I got a very rude awakening when I realized I had completely screwed it up royally and it leaks like no tomorrow.

its ok though because I had a feeling I was going to mess it up and only used 4 sheets to cover less than half of the run. I didn't use the correct fasteners and used roofing nails .... I knew better than that and cut a corner and hoped that putting them on the peak would prevent the leaking... dead wrong!

so..... needless to say I will be redoing that portion of the roof this weekend and hopefully have time for the rest of it.

My only defense is I have never done a roof before but even that is not a good excuse because a simple google search would have prevented this outcome .

I guess that's what I get for trying to cut corners and use what I had instead of what I needed... lesson learned.

anywho I'm still slaving away over here... I hope to have a roof on and some pics next week!

well if that is the first setback, i would say you are doing pretty well, all things considered!!

mobius said:

well if that is the first setback, i would say you are doing pretty well, all things considered!!

Click to expand...

Thank you! haha

I mean I have had a few minor set backs, but nothing like this so far "knock on wood"

Just realized from thread title that this chicken run is 100% urban...but not necessarily 100% predator proof...
Bummer about roof leaking, not quite sure what you did wrong tho.

aart said:

Just realized from thread title that this chicken run is 100% urban...but not necessarily 100% predator proof...
Bummer about roof leaking, not quite sure what you did wrong tho.

Click to expand...

is there a way I can change the title of the thread? haha
however it will be 100% Urban predator proof... IE, Cats, Dogs, Coons, Hawks, rats, mice... luckily I don't have to worry about coyotes, Bears etc....

Well the rain we got was pretty extreme, but the fasteners I need have rubber washers built in and instead of fastening from the peak I should have used those fasteners and attached from the valley of the metal which would allow for a very tight and leak proof roof.
long story short I was trying to use what I had around here and thought I was smart and used nails at the peak but it didn't matter because it leaked badly... but hey it was a lesson in roofing I never would have gotten if I hadn't tried it.

aart said:

100% 'urban predator' proof gotcha.
Need pics of roof...am cognitively impaired.

Click to expand...

I thought it was an "urban coop (or run)" that was "100% predator-proof" too! Course, I get to the word predator, in relation to the word coop (or run), and all other cognitive processes leave for Mexico. And I am geographically aphasic, BTW. And electrically-challenged, lest we forget. Not that THAT had anything to do with it, but you are not the only one with an impairment around here, @aart!

aart said:

100% 'urban predator' proof gotcha.
Need pics of roof...am cognitively impaired.

Click to expand...

oh trust me when I'm done with that stupid roof you will know haha

OK peeps,
This one is gonna be a long post so get your reading glasses on and a hot beverage. on your marks, get set....... GO!

Note: the comment in reference to picture is this order: Comment, pic, Comment, pic, Comment, Pic

SO last time I left you I was in the process of framing and securing the HW cloth, well I am pretty much wrapped up with that now. So lets go over my wonderful work pic by pic.
So I believe I may have missed a few picture opportunities since the last pic, as you can see from this pic I used metal tie straps to strengthen the structure but more so for giving the HW cloth a good securing point for both the lower and upper portion of the HW cloth. As of right now the HW cloth is only attached with 18G staples. I will eventually put the trim board up once the weather and temperature allows for proper staining. At that point I will sandwich the HW cloth ensuring a strong resistance to pressure for the outside.

After I was done securing the HW cloth around the outside I started on my rafters. My rafters are spaced at 18" and there are 14 of them. I questioned whether to go 2x6 but I already had 10 of the 10' 2x4s and I just couldn't justify buying 14 of the 10' 2x6's. You cants see it here and I doubt I took a picture before covering but in the front the rafters are secured with hurricane ties and then blocked with 2x4s to strengthen. the rafters were cut at around the 10' mark which gives us around 7" overhang in the rear and a good 17" overhang in the front and were cut with a slant to add to the look I was going for. There are two rafters around the door frame that I only used for structure and you cant see them from the outside. I used 2x4s to support them so they can add to structural support. You can also see here that I got a wild hair and had these shutters in my tool shed for years and finally found a way to use them. will they serve a purpose? Probably not, but hell I think it looks good.

You can see here the once I had my rafters secured I laid my battens which I used cheap wood on 1"x3.5" but they are spaced at 10" which is plenty of support for the roof to be laid. Yes, there is a bump at the front that you can see immediately. This is common in my projects because I typically dislike "perfect" construction and yes that means I got lazy and didn't want to fix it haha!
My first attempt at laying the roof went horribly wrong because I didn't take the 15 seconds to search Google about installing a metal roof and tried to wing it and I ended up with a leaking roof. My suggestion is Google is your friend when it comes to a watertight roof. After I wasted a day on that I contemplated how I was going to fix my issue and I read up on it and decided that I would just leave the bad roof on and go over it correctly since I have only done four panels incorrectly. This actually benefited me a lot in the second attempt because I was able to sit on the roof without bending it where as before I was balancing on the rafters and I'm not that graceful. One thing you can't see here is that the metal roof is 12' sheets and my roof is 10'. which I will discus in a later picture.

This picture shows the front overhang which will be more than sufficient to prevent blow back rain and I think it gives it a good look and will provide cover for things that may need to be added on in the future to the front of the coop ( IE storage, Food, ETC) this also gives you a good view of the lattice I put up. I had this from a previous project that was just getting rained on and ruined so I used it and will trim it in to give it a cool look later.

This is how you correctly fasten a roof. Pre drill your holes (for metal) and use the correct fasteners with the rubber washers. I actually spent a little extra and bought the self tapping 1' fasteners however because some sections of the roof had two sheets on it they were hard to use that way so I just predrilled those areas and used the self tapping for the clear plastic and single sheets of metal. but I could see that for a large roofing project self tapping being the way to go as it will reduce the time in half. ALSO after countless hours trying to figure out whether to install from the peak of the corrugation of the roof or the valley I decided on the valley. First the manufacturer stated it should be installed that way and it made the most sense because the only way those washers will do their job is if they are tight against the wood and you can't do that for the peaks because they will bend and crease and then you have a horrible looking roof.

Now if you notice here I used clear plastic panels for part of the roof. This was because of a lack of sunlight as well as a full metal roof would have lead it to be really dark in the run. This kept it bright and during the summer it will allow direct light that can be controlled with shade cloth or other cloth. I have the metal roof on half so that in the summer time they don't have a complete run in direct sunlight. however I will note that the clear plastic panels are not very sturdy and are around $35 a pop which is double the $13 metal panels so keep this in mind if you are planning to use these. I actually used three panels for this section and overlapped all three to make is more sturdy for snow load.

Before I mentioned about the rear of the roof being longer than the rafters and this is why. you can see in the below picture that I have the roof resting on the privacy fence in the rear and you can see the alley as well. I did this for a few reasons in which I will describe in the next few pictures.


Because I have a 6' privacy fence I designed the roof to basically rest on the fence itself which will keep water from bouncing off the fence and back into the run and it will also keep snow from piling up between the fence and the run and pressing on the HW cloth or melting into the run, which we are trying to avoid of course!
I also want to note that you can see I sandwiched the entire backside with PT 2x4s as you will never see it and wanted to do that before I closed it up again with the fence panels. you can also see my 2x6 lagged into place and notched for the roof rafters to ensure a safe snow load capacity.

there are two thing I tried to capture in this picture. One was the security of the back. The HW cloth skirt that was put behind the run was not working well with the fence. so what I did was overlap the HW cloth under ground that was the skirt and folded it to the 4x4 support on the bottom and stapled it and then ran an 2x4 board to sandwich it in. but then that left room for digging, so I put cinder blocks down to prevent digging. another thing you can see here which will make more sense in the next picture is the skylight I put in.

This picture shows you why I put the roof overhanging into the alley about 3". The run off rain and snow will stay out of my run and I will put a gutter system on it eventually to gather the rain for the chickens. you can slightly see the skylight I put in as well on the fence. I will explain that in the next pic.


I added a skylight for my girls due to a lack of light in the run. During the summer this will not be a bad thing but during the winter they hardly get any sunlight due to the privacy fence facing south. I will actually add another panel to this to extend the light to the whole run but this brightened it up pretty good when the sun hits it directly. One thing I did not want to use though was a clear panel because even though people don't often use this alley, sometimes people do walk down it and I don't want them being able to mess with my chickens and sometimes its best to keep temptation out of sight. I used a white panel and just cute my privacy fence and framed out a secure frame and used the same fasteners as the roof.

Here is the door. I used 2x4's and L brackets and T brackets to give it structure and then put in a door frame that will prevent push in from outside the run and YES it is very sturdy, the latches will come later once I get the trim boards up. I also made it big enough so that you can get a Wheelbarrow in there.

I added another 4x4 all the way around the bottom to allow for bedding in the run so this together should allow for 6" of bedding which I doubt we will ever get upto.


Well I'm just about done with the run for the winter unless we get a warm spell I don't foresee me staining anytime soon. So now I want to get the basic structure for the coop. These 4x4s were in place before this project for our compost and I left them in because they are perfecting set up for this.


I framed out for the floor of the coop and then covered in HW cloth to prevent mice and rats from chewing in underneath. My idea is to clean out under the coop and make this a good storage area for bedding, cleaning supplies, water and feed dishes, ect.


I just added this picture to show how I tied it into the run.





SO that's pretty much all I got right now folks. there is still a lot left to do but I think I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.