I'm actually going to school to be an interior designer right now and have already taken auto cad and have a bit of construction experience under my belt. So this year since my hubby and i finally moved into something other than an apartment, i wanted to design a fancy coop myself for my own flock. I set my dad up with 9 pretty girls a few years ago and my husband and i built his A frame coop from some free plans online out of left over wood... it's a bit ugly and rickety now but it still does the job.
So now after designing my 8'x 4'x 8' coop with a slight slope on the roof (i had originally designed it with a gambrel roof but towards the end i just wanted the thing done so i opted out) and i had designed it to be somewhat portable to be moved maybe twice a year. We live in the desert so in the summer the coop at my dad's is in the shade and in the cold winters it's in the sun.
And indeed it is *kind of* portable... we estimated up the weight of all the lumber and we guessed it's around 250lbs. So with two lifting, it can be moved.
Now my question to you, is about high winds. We live up on the south side of a mountain and get winds 20mph or so all the time and in storms winds get the 50's sometimes. So I've now realized-after losing much sleep up paranoid-that my coop is VERY top heavy and could (maybe not turn into a kite... but still) tip and crash into the side walk in high winds because it doesn't have a foundation...
So i was thinking about driving 4 t posts into the ground right next to/inside it and putting a small chain around the posts and major studs to keep it from toppling over. But do you happen to know any better way to secure it to the ground better (and at this point it's fine if it isn't actually portable, i think I'll just plant a fruit tree on the sunny side of it for shade) and maybe a bit more aesthetically pleasing than t posts? Mostly i just don't know what to do because about every other way I've seen to secure it to a foundation you're building from the ground up instead of attaching a fully built structure onto the foundation.
Thank you for your time, and any help for my coop with no foundation...
Sarah
So now after designing my 8'x 4'x 8' coop with a slight slope on the roof (i had originally designed it with a gambrel roof but towards the end i just wanted the thing done so i opted out) and i had designed it to be somewhat portable to be moved maybe twice a year. We live in the desert so in the summer the coop at my dad's is in the shade and in the cold winters it's in the sun.
And indeed it is *kind of* portable... we estimated up the weight of all the lumber and we guessed it's around 250lbs. So with two lifting, it can be moved.
Now my question to you, is about high winds. We live up on the south side of a mountain and get winds 20mph or so all the time and in storms winds get the 50's sometimes. So I've now realized-after losing much sleep up paranoid-that my coop is VERY top heavy and could (maybe not turn into a kite... but still) tip and crash into the side walk in high winds because it doesn't have a foundation...
So i was thinking about driving 4 t posts into the ground right next to/inside it and putting a small chain around the posts and major studs to keep it from toppling over. But do you happen to know any better way to secure it to the ground better (and at this point it's fine if it isn't actually portable, i think I'll just plant a fruit tree on the sunny side of it for shade) and maybe a bit more aesthetically pleasing than t posts? Mostly i just don't know what to do because about every other way I've seen to secure it to a foundation you're building from the ground up instead of attaching a fully built structure onto the foundation.
Thank you for your time, and any help for my coop with no foundation...
Sarah
