Diagram complete, now to build

[Ruralhideaway]

Just have to share my excitement, picking up my cattle panels tomorrow for the half hoop!

Once I wrestle one a bit to confirm exact placement who knows, maybe I'll get right to work. I'm fairly certain I could set posts with patience and motrin.

I might move the thing though from where my drawing shows it. After staking out the placement today I'm starting to think it's going to restrict truck access to my pastures too much. Which is rarely needed but could happen.

It could even potentially need to shrink from 16ft to 12.5 ft. Seems like a 12x10(ish) covered run would still be ok for them in the winter. They'd have access to much more uncovered space as well. I'll be staring at this, confused, all evening I'm sure.

 

[aart]

Just have to share my excitement, picking up my cattle panels tomorrow for the half hoop!

 

[Ruralhideaway]

I now have a small mountain of fun stuff, 7 cattle panels, couple hundred feet of hardware cloth, lumber, cement, ahh such goodies!

I'm a bit choked, scared to begin! I don't want to wreck my materials. But begin I must. Here's the configuration I'm going with.

The half hoop even with the cattle panels to play with was still hard to figure out. I ended up using lined paper strips marked to scale to figure out how much I'll have to cut off the CP. I'll be doing the half hoop 10ft wide away from the coop at the base, 16 feet long. It'll be almost 8 high at the coop with good headroom. I'll need to cut 2 and a half feet off the panels. There are still variables in how and where it'll be anchored and secured to create and maintain the arch as I want it. Guess I'll find out as I go.

It will still get that early morning winter sunshine I want to harvest although less than I hoped, but I can't block access to that pasture gate too much.

So I'm going to get things measured and marked, then we'll see just how frozen the earth is.

To be continued with pics of all my screw ups!

 

[aart]

Cut one panel to the length you thing you need, get a couple tposts and try 'er out!
It'll be fun once you get started

 

[Ruralhideaway]

Cut one panel to the length you thing you need, get a couple tposts and try 'er out!
It'll be fun once you get started

Maybe I'll even do that before I start digging post holes. Don't fancy doing more of that than needed at all.

 

[aart]

Maybe I'll even do that before I start digging post holes. Don't fancy doing more of that than needed at all.

Absolutely......you really should play with the panels before deciding on your 'final' design. Woman-handle a full panel, then cut one and play some more. I really think it will help.

 

[Ruralhideaway]

I tried them all kinds of ways yesterday, had to think hard about where to cut. Using paper strips too scale was ideal though.

Thing is I'm cheap and want my cutoffs complete, not in experimental bits and pieces, so I can use them for garden trellis instead of wasting them.

 

[aart]

I hear ya on the waste vs reuse.
I give stuff to an artist friend if I can't reuse it and he shapes into something.

 

[Ruralhideaway]

I hear ya on the waste vs reuse.
I give stuff to an artist friend if I can't reuse it and he shapes into something.

That's perfect, let that stuff live on. Hey you never know, your hardware cloth cut offs could be a crucial ingredient in a famous work some day.

 

[Ruralhideaway]

Got the basis of the open wall built, header is built and up. Didn't use the huge beam, just made one from 2x6s. Used a post spike bracket for that post.

Nothings straight on my ugly old shed, nothing, so it was a pain. In fact I'm going to have to back the lags out at the center point and shim it. Not today though, my son was home to help and he's got strong shoulders but zero carpentry skills so I'm tired.

If anyone sees anything glaringly dumb, please let me know.