We decided to fully insulate the walls and floor with pink fibreglass and vapour barrier. This really helped keep the coop cool this summer - our chicks love to hang out inside in the heat of the day. It is as yet untested in winter! We put tar paper directly over the insulation, and then siding over that. No exterior sheathing.

Main access door is a 32" insulated metal door cut down to size with a double-paned sealed unit window that has internal venetian blinds (fancy!), both found for cheap at Habitat Re-Store. The roof is black asphalt shingle. We fully flashed all edges. This is one overbuilt coop! With so much insulation in the coop, we decided to leave the long sides of the roof completely open (except for hardware mesh), with plans to block it off as necessary when the weather gets colder. This is an untested concept! We hope it works. For the heat of summer, it has been great. The coop is much cooler inside than outside.

Closeup of nest box construction. With such thick coop walls they don't stick outside too far but we insulated the sides and door with 1.5" DuroFoam and the base with a double layer in hopes of keeping winter eggs from freezing quite so quickly.

The siding was SmartSide panel from home depot and we put it right over the tar paper. The window is a double-paned, sealed unit found at Architectural Clearinghouse.

We decided to fully insulate the walls and floor with pink fibreglass and vapour barrier. This really helped keep the coop cool this summer - our chicks love to hang out inside in the heat of the day. It is as yet untested in winter! We put tar paper directly over the insulation, and then siding over that. No exterior sheathing.

We used typical 2x4 framing construction.

We started with four sturdy posts sunk 20" into the ground, then built a frame on top.

The building site, an odd triangle-shaped piece of land behind our garage, about 12' x 17' x 24'. We live on 4 treed acres but due to environmental restrictions needed to stick to a city-type set-up. No roosters, and everything well within our house footprint. (The big tank is our rain barrel.) Predators are plentiful and frequently seen in our yard so security was a big concern.

We decided to fully insulate the walls and floor with pink fibreglass and vapour barrier. This really helped keep the coop cool this summer - our chicks love to hang out inside in the heat of the day. It is as yet untested in winter! We put tar paper directly over the insulation, and then siding over that. No exterior sheathing.

bryoria
Sep 2, 2014

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