Design of overhead roof

[georgannedel]

I'm planning a chicken run with an overhead roof of chicken wire and have lots of questions. I'm dreaming of a run that is 24 x 24 with the coop enclosed in that area. How close together do the upright posts need to be? Do interior posts have to be 4 x 4 also? How close together do I need to set the overhead ties? Do the overhead ties need to be 2 x 4? What is the best way to attach the overhead ties? Any advice you can give is appreciated.

 

[teach1rusl]

That's a big run to cover. Here's a pic of how we did ours. We used landscape timbers rather than 4x4s as posts to save money (we had a bunch of them already for another project). We placed ours every 8 ft. I built 2x4 frames (8ft x 6ft) to screw onto the posts. I built frames for the "ceiling" too, but they were 8ft.x8ft.

Backside:

Ours is 16 x 36. We did save money by building against our garage/workshop.

 

[Bipolar_Hippo]

I'd include a sketch of what you want to do. Then everyone can get a better feel of what to use. If you use 2x6 or 2x8 you may be able to stretch the 4x4 vertical distance.

 

[georgannedel]

Quote:
Teach your pen is beautiful, thank you for posting the pics. Luckily I'm going to be able to use the back of a goat shed to build onto as well. The landscape timbers you refer to look like what I'd call field fence posts (round, treated poles). Does that sound right? Did you set them in cement or just ground? The ground for our run slants downward away from the shed. Don't have the means to fill it in to make it level. I'd like to keep the 6' height. If I can't handle longer poles the framing will have to slant too. Any thoughts on that? The wire you used for the roof looks nice as well. Is that 1 x 1? Again thank you for the pictures, great inspiration!

 

[teach1rusl]

Quote:
Teach your pen is beautiful, thank you for posting the pics. Luckily I'm going to be able to use the back of a goat shed to build onto as well. The landscape timbers you refer to look like what I'd call field fence posts (round, treated poles). Does that sound right? Did you set them in cement or just ground? The ground for our run slants downward away from the shed. Don't have the means to fill it in to make it level. I'd like to keep the 6' height. If I can't handle longer poles the framing will have to slant too. Any thoughts on that? The wire you used for the roof looks nice as well. Is that 1 x 1? Again thank you for the pictures, great inspiration!

The landscape timbers are ovalish, with two flattened sides, two rounded edges. Our field fence posts are totally round. But either would work. Landscape timbers are a lot cheaper than 4x4s, but I'm not sure compared to field posts. Andthey come in 8ft. lengths, which is handy. We did use a little quickrete (or whatever it's called) in each post hole, since the frames that were going to be screwed on would add up in weight (the roofing panels primarily).

That's actually good that your area slopes away from your goat shed...better drainage.

If you end up doing panels that you'll screw onto your posts, then it won't matter at all that your posts, and therefore your roof line, lowers as well with the slope of the land. I'd just sink each post 18-24", depending on your ground/dirt type, and whether you're handy with a chainsaw or not (so that each post sticks up 6ft).

I used 2x4 welded wire on all of my panels. I added HW cloth to the lower 24 inches to prevent reach-ins. I really like our run, but cutting and nailing all that danged wire onto all of those panels sure was a royal pain...my hands felt arthritic by the time things were done.

I would suggest, since you're planning on such a large run, that you have two doors. It's made things so much simpler for me. If you have any specific questions when you're planning or building, just PM me and I'll help as best I can...

 

[Hawkeye95]

Quote:
WOW!!!!!!!!

beautiful run!!!!