building a-frame, need help please?

[GoodEgg]

Foxtrapper,

THANK YOU sooooo much! This is exactly the kind of information I was needing. I confess I have NO idea what I am doing, LOL. I hadn't thought of the strength difference, so I'm glad I'll be turning them on their sides. And I had finally gotten to the point of realizing that I really do have to miter those ends. I'm glad to know it doesn't have to be exact. In that case I'm sure I can handle it. Thanks for the info on joist spacing as well.

I think I'm going to make the whole thing a triangle, instead of square sides with a roof. I just can't afford much more for materials (although the salvage yard is costing 1/2 of the hardware store).

I really do appreciate your reply so much. This helps tremendously!

trish

 

[ruth]

Hi Good Egg (Trish) - glad to be of help. We had no idea what we were doing either and it was supposed to only be half that size using only 4 or 5 left over plywood shutters from Katrina. As I mentioned, my husband (who has NO building experience) began building a huge rectangle that kept falling apart. My son (who just returned from Army service and Iraq duty and is helping a contractor build homes for the summer) came home and felt sorry for hubby who did not know what to do next. My son built it like a house with supports, etc. He kept saying "Remember mom, I'm having to work with the frame John made. You should have let me build it from scratch using your design). Anyway, together they really got carried away. I had to keep going out and reminding them it was a chicken coop not a hurricane shelther. As I said it turned out to be too long and too wide for most building materials so they kept adding on 2 x 4s to fill in gaps. Thing weighs a ton and supported both men when they got on roof. Wish I had known about rolled roofing too before they began with the sheet metal. They started with sheet metal and then could not figure out how to put a seam in it and still be able to open nest boxes. You do need something other than paint though because in our climate the plywood will warp in one day. Take a close look at pics and you will see boards nailed on top of nest box area. That's because it went 2 days without the rolled roofing and then curled up like a U-shaped horseshoe. I had to take the boards off, soak them and then weight them down to dry before putting them back on. Boards were to keep it straight till it dried completely. I'm thinking about using the rest of the roll to put on front and back instead of painting because I think it will provide better water protection. Anyway, thought you and others could get an idea of a triangle coop, off the ground, that should have been built with about 4 pieces of plywood - 1 on each side of roof to form triangle and 1 as front and 1 as back instead of 2 of each as they did. Like I said - live and learn. It's big enough now for dozens of chicks instead of just my 9.

 

[suburbanhomesteader]

I live in Dallas, where it is comfortable-to-hot 8 months of the year, but can be bitterly cold for 2 week stretches between Nov > March.

The chicken tractor I purchased at the start of the "Great Chicken Adventure" has hardware cloth floors in the "coop" caboose (see pics I posted in the coop photo section at the top of this thread).

One evening after I purchased it, the temp was supposed to plummet into the 20's; I had not expected that. I grabbed a couple of bags of leaves I had gathered around the neighborhood (and hoped to use on my garden) and spread the leaves over the wire floor to a depth of a couple of inches; it stayed relatively toasty inside. A couple of weeks later when the weather warmed up again, I pulled the leaves out and voila! Cool coop again!

Have decided I am not going to mess with a plywood bottom when it's cold; I'll just throw down leaves again. I have not noticed the hens having problems with the hardware cloth floor. I'm going to be purchasing plastic flooring from farmtek as a trial in the new coop I'm going to build which will attach to the Chunnel.

http://www.farmtek.com/farm/supplies/prod1;;pgHA2215_HA2217.html

[URL][url=http://www.farmtek.com/farm/supplies/ProductImageView?catalogId=10052&storeId=10001&langId=-1&division=FarmTek&magnify=ha2215a.jpg&imglist=HA2217a.jpg%7cha2217b.jpg%7cha2215a.jpg][/URL]