Run Build - Plans and Footings
The run had to be an irregular shape, to accommodate the tree that was in my way, as well as to work with the proximity of the raised garden and the shrubbery. I considered making it a regular rectangle/square with a "tunnel" connecting it to the coop, behind the young tree, but that would've reduced its total area. I wanted to make use of all the space I had, and give the chickens every last square foot. So I went ahead with the irregular shape. I like a good challenge anyway!
The run is 8' tall in the front and 6' tall in the back. It has a clear polycarbonate roof.
Here are the plans. The grid represents 1'x1' and everything is to scale.
Here's a version with the polycarbonate roofing laid on top (the dashed line is where I cut the panels. I used a piece of the leftover roofing material to patch up the rectangular hole).
I built a scale model to help me visualize it. The grid is 1"x1", representing 1'x1'. The posts would be 8' along the front of the run, and 6' along the back, with the short connector section next to the coop itself 6' on both front and back. To give the roof a bit of a slant for drainage, but to avoid getting longer pieces of wood and hitting the branches of the linden tree (6' was about as high as I could go without cutting branches), I used 6' for the front as well, but I layered two pieces of wood for the top plate on the front, and only one on the back. Now that little section of roof has enough of a slant to shed rain, and if snow doesn't want to slide down easily, I can always push it down with a rake. It's a very small section of roof and, because it's only 6' tall, it's easily reachable with a short ladder or step stool.
It doesn't have rafters or even all the vertical supports, but I mostly wanted to see what the shape would look like and how the big pieces would connect. This really helped me see that the two different roof angles - of the main section and of the small section next to the coop - were actually not too different, and with the polycarbonate roofing panels being flexible, I'd be able to just bend them a little and cover everything, without needing to use the diagonal section as a separate angled slope to connect between the two. It ended up working out fine.
The outline in context:
Work is starting! (the kids wanted to "help", so their things are all over the place)
I dug the holes for the support posts with a one-man auger. Very unfair name. It was a one-woman auger this time.
The holes are 24" deep. Technically they need to be deeper than the frost line, and our frost line is at 30+ inches, but the auger only goes so deep. And there was no way I could dig any deeper by hand. So it's gonna have to be enough. It was incredibly difficult to dig because our soil is very rocky, and because my run is at the base of a giant tree, with roots as thick as my thigh right where I needed to dig. In some places, I wasn't able to dig at all. So, some of the supports have the 2' in-ground footers, and the others where I wasn't able to dig, have these footer blocks instead:
Trusty BYC builder members advised me not to sink the posts themselves into the ground (like I see so many people do in Youtube tutorials), because the wood would rot. Rather, they advised me to use fence post anchors instead, and that's what I did. Very good advice.
The ground was very uneven, so in some places I had to pile up the concrete to lift the supports a bit (they were all the same height - 8' in the front and 6' in the back). To keep the concrete from spilling over, I used a thin plastic flower pot, the kind that plants are sold in. After the concrete hardened, I just peeled the plastic pot away.
For the pre-made concrete footer blocks, I did sink them into the ground some, for extra stability:
After the concrete had set, I put in the 4x4 posts.
To give the posts in the pre-made footer blocks better support, I drilled a long 6" bolt into the underside of each of them, sticking out about 4", like this:
The footer blocks have round holes about 2-3" in diameter in the middle of the square post hole, like this:
I filled the round hole with concrete, leaving a thin layer of it on the bottom of the square hole as well, and stuck the post in the square post hole, with the bolt going 4" down into the wet concrete. When the concrete cured, the post felt very stable (it was wobbly before).
That's it for the footers. Check out the next section for the fence part.
The run is 8' tall in the front and 6' tall in the back. It has a clear polycarbonate roof.
Here are the plans. The grid represents 1'x1' and everything is to scale.
Here's a version with the polycarbonate roofing laid on top (the dashed line is where I cut the panels. I used a piece of the leftover roofing material to patch up the rectangular hole).
I built a scale model to help me visualize it. The grid is 1"x1", representing 1'x1'. The posts would be 8' along the front of the run, and 6' along the back, with the short connector section next to the coop itself 6' on both front and back. To give the roof a bit of a slant for drainage, but to avoid getting longer pieces of wood and hitting the branches of the linden tree (6' was about as high as I could go without cutting branches), I used 6' for the front as well, but I layered two pieces of wood for the top plate on the front, and only one on the back. Now that little section of roof has enough of a slant to shed rain, and if snow doesn't want to slide down easily, I can always push it down with a rake. It's a very small section of roof and, because it's only 6' tall, it's easily reachable with a short ladder or step stool.
It doesn't have rafters or even all the vertical supports, but I mostly wanted to see what the shape would look like and how the big pieces would connect. This really helped me see that the two different roof angles - of the main section and of the small section next to the coop - were actually not too different, and with the polycarbonate roofing panels being flexible, I'd be able to just bend them a little and cover everything, without needing to use the diagonal section as a separate angled slope to connect between the two. It ended up working out fine.
The outline in context:
Work is starting! (the kids wanted to "help", so their things are all over the place)
I dug the holes for the support posts with a one-man auger. Very unfair name. It was a one-woman auger this time.
The holes are 24" deep. Technically they need to be deeper than the frost line, and our frost line is at 30+ inches, but the auger only goes so deep. And there was no way I could dig any deeper by hand. So it's gonna have to be enough. It was incredibly difficult to dig because our soil is very rocky, and because my run is at the base of a giant tree, with roots as thick as my thigh right where I needed to dig. In some places, I wasn't able to dig at all. So, some of the supports have the 2' in-ground footers, and the others where I wasn't able to dig, have these footer blocks instead:
Trusty BYC builder members advised me not to sink the posts themselves into the ground (like I see so many people do in Youtube tutorials), because the wood would rot. Rather, they advised me to use fence post anchors instead, and that's what I did. Very good advice.
The ground was very uneven, so in some places I had to pile up the concrete to lift the supports a bit (they were all the same height - 8' in the front and 6' in the back). To keep the concrete from spilling over, I used a thin plastic flower pot, the kind that plants are sold in. After the concrete hardened, I just peeled the plastic pot away.
For the pre-made concrete footer blocks, I did sink them into the ground some, for extra stability:
After the concrete had set, I put in the 4x4 posts.
To give the posts in the pre-made footer blocks better support, I drilled a long 6" bolt into the underside of each of them, sticking out about 4", like this:
The footer blocks have round holes about 2-3" in diameter in the middle of the square post hole, like this:
I filled the round hole with concrete, leaving a thin layer of it on the bottom of the square hole as well, and stuck the post in the square post hole, with the bolt going 4" down into the wet concrete. When the concrete cured, the post felt very stable (it was wobbly before).
That's it for the footers. Check out the next section for the fence part.
- Next page: Run Build - Fence
- Previous page: Coop Interior
