future coop and run

[Ridgerunner]

One big advantage to your design is that you could put a lot of ventilation under that porch roof overhang without any rain blowing in your coop. That is a good thing.

I understand you have it drawn, but a drawing is a lot easier to change than something already built. I know you are looking for cheap material too. I understand that. Most building materials come in 4’ or 8’ sections. If you can get used materials in other dimensions, definitely design around those, but if you wind up buying a lot of it, you might consider an 8’ x 12’ instead of a 10’ x 10’. You can normally save a lot of cutting, wind up with less wasted materials, and your overall costs might be a bit less.

I suggest you have a slope on all of your roof and slope it away from the coop and run to keep water out. A flat roof tends to leak. At best water will stand on it and that can lead to rot or rust.

A general rule of thumb is one nest for every four hens, but that is based on a 12” x 12” nest. For eight hens you will need two but do you plan to have even more hens later? My personal preference is for the nests to be a bit bigger. Hens often crowd into one nest, even if there are empty nests available. A larger nest just looks more comfortable when I see three hens crowded in there. Also my broody hens hatch in my nests. The first chicks that hatch like to climb on top of the hen. If the nest is so small the hen is sitting near an edge the chick may fall out of the nest when it slips off. I made mine 16” x 16”, mainly because that was my stud spacing and that made framing the nests easy. I’m glad I did. I can make do with one nest for five hens with mine. Also 16” goes evenly into 4’ or 8’. If you plan your cut sheet carefully before you start whacking on a sheet of plywood, you might wind up with less waste.

You definitely need to be able to walk in the coop and run without banging your head. Looks like you have that covered.

What do I think? I think it looks good and well thought out though you might want to rethink a couple of things. Be flexible. Things never work out exactly as planned but you have a good base to work from.

I am a retired engineer and used Autocad for several years. I definitely agree with scaled drawings, not just on the building but as far as the cut sheets. And pay close attention to the joints and where stuff comes together. The hard part is not the big stuff, the hard part is where you put it together. Thicknesses of the materials has caused me to go back and make fixes when I didn’t take that into account to start with.

Good luck!

 

[PapaChaz]

One big advantage to your design is that you could put a lot of ventilation under that porch roof overhang without any rain blowing in your coop. That is a good thing.

I understand you have it drawn, but a drawing is a lot easier to change than something already built. I know you are looking for cheap material too. I understand that. Most building materials come in 4’ or 8’ sections. If you can get used materials in other dimensions, definitely design around those, but if you wind up buying a lot of it, you might consider an 8’ x 12’ instead of a 10’ x 10’. You can normally save a lot of cutting, wind up with less wasted materials, and your overall costs might be a bit less.

I suggest you have a slope on all of your roof and slope it away from the coop and run to keep water out. A flat roof tends to leak. At best water will stand on it and that can lead to rot or rust.

A general rule of thumb is one nest for every four hens, but that is based on a 12” x 12” nest. For eight hens you will need two but do you plan to have even more hens later? My personal preference is for the nests to be a bit bigger. Hens often crowd into one nest, even if there are empty nests available. A larger nest just looks more comfortable when I see three hens crowded in there. Also my broody hens hatch in my nests. The first chicks that hatch like to climb on top of the hen. If the nest is so small the hen is sitting near an edge the chick may fall out of the nest when it slips off. I made mine 16” x 16”, mainly because that was my stud spacing and that made framing the nests easy. I’m glad I did. I can make do with one nest for five hens with mine. Also 16” goes evenly into 4’ or 8’. If you plan your cut sheet carefully before you start whacking on a sheet of plywood, you might wind up with less waste.

You definitely need to be able to walk in the coop and run without banging your head. Looks like you have that covered.

What do I think? I think it looks good and well thought out though you might want to rethink a couple of things. Be flexible. Things never work out exactly as planned but you have a good base to work from.

I am a retired engineer and used Autocad for several years. I definitely agree with scaled drawings, not just on the building but as far as the cut sheets. And pay close attention to the joints and where stuff comes together. The hard part is not the big stuff, the hard part is where you put it together. Thicknesses of the materials has caused me to go back and make fixes when I didn’t take that into account to start with.

Good luck!

thanks for the insight! I went with 10x10 for a couple reasons, first off easiest footprint to get the layout I wanted, so the porch and storage could be built in. I plan on using T1-11 siding sheets, as you mentioned 4x8 sheets. I'll need 9 sheets, the front and back will be 2 1/2 (total of five) sheets, two on each end. My interior wall will be 7/16' OSB board.

I do plan on a ridge vent, and there will be no ceiling under the porch. I'll have hardware cloth to block the opening above the wall. I do plan vents under the eave on the back, as well as either a ridge vent or gable vents. As for the roof runoff into the coop, I did mention my water drum watering system I intend on puttin in, there will be a gutter on the back roof to direct water into the barrel or holding tank. A water heater catch basin with a drain pipe to route the overflow away from the run, and a tarp over the run from the coop end to about half way should help keep the water away.

at 6x8 coop size, I'm good up to about 12 or 13 chickens, the most I see me having at any one time, so my 3 nesting boxes should be sufficient. With over 200 square feet of run, and part of it covered, I can add on a few roost perches under the tarp or even enclose a few feet and stretch the run by simple framing and another (or more) cattle panel. Although nesting boxes are an easy add on if I need more.

thanks for all the tips!

edit to add a couple more things. As for cutting, as said, the front and back will be 2 1/2 sheets of the siding. Buy at either of the 'big box' stores and tell them I want one sheet halved long ways and they'll do it no charge. The front and back walls will have some cut off to make it shorter, they'll also do those if I know those measurements. The left over pieces will be the shelves in the storage, the dividers and top of the nest boxes. There will be very little waste this way, and very few cuts I'll have to make myself. Pretty much the framing (easy with my sliding compound miter saw) and the gable ends on the siding. The doors and windows of course.

One thing about the 10x10 as well, in my county 10x10 or smaller doesn't require a building permit. Not only does that save me the money for the permit, it saves me having to deal with the building inspector

 

[PapaChaz]

I got started on the coop today. Bought and assembled the floor system and decking. A few pics.....

we framed it to be 10x10, you'll notice some of the joists are on 16" center, the rest are 24". the 16" you see is where the people porch will be. Gotta love buying sheets of plywood at the big box stores, give them your measurements and they'll cut em for you!

Also, you can see I have some absolute great help. She loves to hold the tape measure, and she gets a big thrill out of pulling the trigger on the nail gun. Even though she's doing it, makes her jump every time, and then giggle!

 

[aart]

I got started on the coop today. Bought and assembled the floor system and decking. A few pics.....

.......

She loves to hold the tape measure, and she gets a big thrill out of pulling the trigger on the nail gun. Even though she's doing it, makes her jump every time, and then giggle!

Nice work!

That made me giggle.

 

[PapaChaz]

SCORE!!!!!!!!!!

let me tell you about my trip to home depot to buy the framing materials this morning. I need several 2x4's of various lengths that would have run me $133.22. So as I'm starting to look through the 8' to pick out what I need, a worker there stopped to tell me the 'purple' bin at the end of the aisle had several in it I might want to look at.

The purple bin, is basically a cart that they put the damaged product on, paint a purple spot on it and mark it down 70%.

I bought 20 16' 2x4's that are a little warped or twisted and a 12' PT 2x4, in other words that whole cart of stuff. $51.16! By the time I cut to the lengths I need, some of the twists and warped ends will be worked around. I don't plan on telling the chicks, I'm going to wait and see if they notice I didn't use the top end stuff.....

 

[PapaChaz]

todays progress!

I managed to get the vinyl flooring down after that last pic the other night, wanted to make sure and protect the OSB subfloor from any rain. Today, I got all the walls framed up. I also managed to get the roof trusses built for the coop, it started raining before I could finish them all the way to cover the porch. I'll have to get the porch posts up before I can put them on.

here's a few pics:

front view. porch floor is done, the big opening in the middle is the people door. The window is the smaller frame in the upper left, the big rectangle below it is where the nest box will come out. DW decided that even though there's a big enough door to walk inside, she wants to be able to lift the lid and get the eggs without going inside. So all you married guys know, if mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy. Therefore, she gets the external nest box....

this one shows the vinyl floor a bit better, and there's no framing on the outside of this end because there will be double doors made out of the siding. Can be mounted to the end studs of the front and back walls. The 2x4 sticking down in the middle there and the two pieces nailed to the floor are for the OSB panel for the inside wall, there will be 2 ft of storage area on this end. I'll have steps up to it.


roof trusses! As you can see from the shine, it had started a light rain. I still need to cut 3 more OSB braces to attach to the middle trusses, but power tools and rain are not a good mix so I called it a day. Hoping the weather man is wrong about tomorrow, I'd sure love to get it dried in! Oh, yes I do realize one side of the truss is longer, LOL, at least I hope they are! that's for the overhang on the rear, the front will have the porch roof so they didn't need to overhang.

 

[speedy2020]

Hey all,
we got the opportunity to buy a house back in the country again and here we are! I told the DW, I wouldn't be long having chickens again, one of the main reasons I hated living inside the city limits.

So anyway, we bougth 8 blue americaunas from a local breeder, 6 are about 1 1/2 weeks, and the other two were hatched this past monday. I built a brooder box and they are currently in the kitchen....LOL.

So I've drawn up a coop and run, using google sketchup. Man I love that program! it is somewhat limited (the free version) on colors you can pick to 'paint' with, but this will be the design:

The footprint will be 10x10. The actual coop interior will be 6x8. The porch will be 4 ft wide. DW wanted one that looked like a playhouse.....

The feeder will be built in, gravity fed PVC, a little more description a bit later, the roost will be along the back wall, above the pop doors.

Not sure if I will leave the pop door out the side or not, and after looking at it, I am thinking the nest box under the window will be exterior with a lid top instead of a door to reach into it. My reasoning for that is that for future chick raising, I can fix the brooder box on that side of the coop. I have two pop doors going out the back into the run. For the run, I am going to use cattle panels to make a hoop run, with a door on the end. The coop and run will be 6 1/2' tall, with the peak of the roof being 8', that minimizes the waste on plywood panels. The 1 1/2' I'll cut off on the front and rear panels will be used for shelves for the storage area, seen on the other side:

As mentioned, the two doors on that side will open to a 2' deep storage area. I'll put metal cans in there to hold the feed, and the extra cuts of the plywood will be used as shelves. I intend on making a feeder box on the inside of the coop wall, and cut a hole through from the storage area with a PVS pipe going through the wall and down to the feeder box to gravity feed it. Might as well put it right there where I can fill it from the storage where the feed will be.

I didn't draw in the extra framing that I'll have to do for the run, but it will require more framework. I also didn't draw in the watering system. My plans are to build a stand to hold a food grade plastic drum, plumb in some pvc pipe down the side of the run a ways and put in the watering nipples.

One other aspect, going back to future chicks.....to build the brooder box along the side wall I will have access to the pop door on that side, most likely will have to move that pop door more toward the corner. In my last coop and run that I built, I had the run divided down the middle with a pop door to each. To keep the adults and chicks separate, yet where they could see each other. In this design above, I will be able to go in with fencing and cordon off a section the same way, only make it totally temporary. By just fastening the top of the fence to the cattle panel side, angling down to the ground so as to take in the pop door, and staking the bottom of the fence to the ground.

I do realize that side window will need a storm window over it when the brooder is in. I won't be wiring this coop, but will have access with an extension cord to be able to put a heat lamp in the brooder.

I will take plenty of pictures for posting when I am actually building this. Will probably start on the site prep next week, with my disabilities, it will take me a month to build this, where as back before the injuries, I would have been able to do it in a week or less. It will be on one side of our 1 1/2 acre yard, built under the trees for shade in the summer. It will be wood framed, T-111 plywood panel exterior, plywood floor with vinyl for easy cleaning, corrogated metal roofing....

So whatcha think?

What is the name of the software that you used to generate the drawing?

 

[PapaChaz]

What is the name of the software that you used to generate the drawing?

google sketchup. It's a free download, for the first thirty days they give you all the bells and whistles, after that, if you don't pay the fee to go 'pro' they take out some of the extras. Honestly, I've been using it for a over a year and I can't tell any difference. I guess I just don't do enough fancy stuff to notice, LOL.

If you download it, definitely watch the video tutorials, will get you up and running with it in no time.

 

[PapaChaz]

Another day's progress, in between rain showers.

I finished cutting and attaching the OSB truss braces. During one of the longer pretty good downpours, I went over to the big orange box store and bought the siding panels. I did my measuring and had them cut as much as I could, I'll cut out my doors and windows and the gable ends. Sure does help to get the panels cut by them.

Got back home and the rain stopped and the sun came out. Got the hurricane clips up and mounted the trusses:

got started on the siding, and the daughter and son in law dropped by. Managed to get the back wall up, the end gable above where the double doors will be:


DW got home from work, walked down to check on things, she pointed out that I hadn't framed in the window on the end. So I got that done in time for supper....For those who don't realize, I flipped the plan from the rendering I posted in the OP, she decided she likes the double doors, but wants them on the back side. Of course she does, so I'll have to walk all the way around to get to the storage and feed.....LOL.

Hoping the rain holds off tomorrow, my 1/2" mesh hardware cloth is supposed to be here tomorrow, and I can get the eave on the back done, get the windows done before I put the siding on and then get the peak of the roof covered so I can get the metal on it. If the weather would hold off, I could just about get it dried in tomorrow

 

[Steve P]

Looks good still waiting for snow to melt here in MI so I can start my build. Going to go this weekend and buy all my materials and wait.