Lighting without electricity?

[rosemarythyme]

Nope - I think @LisaMarie81 is telling you to remove the second story flooring and open up the entire house as one, tall unit. "Replace" the flooring with a couple of roosts. You'll need to leave enough flight room for them to fly up to the highest perches. They won't miss having the floor and they'll have more vertical space to move around.

Yup, that's what I meant. Treat the whole unit as one large box, instead of a large box with a tinier upstairs box. It's the quickest "fix" for a coop/run combo like that, to give it usable floor space and add ventilation/light all in one move.

 

[lazy gardener]

I would turn the entire unit into a coop. Then build a run on to that. What are you doing with the space under the tree house? The way I see it, the floor of the tree house could be the ceiling of a coop!

 

[MROO]

BTW - LOVE the treehouse! We had a great playhouse when my kids were little, but now that they're teenagers, we've converted it for my daughter's 4H chickens. The way I see it, it's still her playhouse, only now she shares it with ME!

 

[LisaMarie81]

Good idea on the treehouse! Right now we were thinking of putting a swing under the front deck area of the tree house, but there's no reason why we couldn't utilize the actual house area underneath

 

[pginsber]

Mine is on solar, got a solar panel kit at Harbor Freight Tools (larger than that above), added a car battery to my set up so I can run 12V fans, it's HOT here in the summer. My panels and battery run a coop light, on a timer, my automatic door, on a timer, and 3 small fans in my coop. Solar panels go outside, wires run inside the run in rafters where my battery and charge controller are mounted in the rafters also. Wires run in the rafters to timers, lights and fans. It's all 12V so very little risk of fire, and fused, if you are only going to run one small led light you don't need much in the way of panels, I would suggest investing in a timer though, makes things much easier than having to remember to switch things on and off.

I'm interested in some pics and details of your setup. In Indiana in the summer, it easily reaches 90-100 with humidity that will make even a bald person's hair fuzz out! It's supposed to be 95/96 degrees this weekend, and I'd love to understand your fan setup--potentially do something similar in our coop.

 

[coach723]

Here are some pictures, sorry it's overdue for a deep cleaning (and repainting), so dust and cobwebs! Hope these help and maybe give you some ideas. I'm always modifying, and will again this year, I'm going to add more windows to my large clean-out doors on the back for increased ventilation, though my ridge vent helps a lot.
Here is my coop and enclosed run, you can see my solar panels in the back right. I plan to add a couple of panels in the future for a bit more power, in the summer when all fans are running all the time I run a trickle charger to help right now. I can go several days with no power at all currently. In the winter I don't have to run the trickle charge at all.
But I have 3 fans, the light and my automatic door on it.

Here is one of two window fans, they are mounted outside and blow out, one on each side of the coop, you can see the other on the other side in the background. They are sufficiently protected from rain that I've never had a problem. They are mounted to the hardware cloth with cable ties so I can take them off and clean them, I just replace the ties.

This is the larger fan in the peak of the coop, under and slightly to the side of the ridge vent. The light is an LED bulb on a timer. The fan is on a switch so I can leave it on all the time or only as needed. Timer for the light is on the wall to the right of the light, just out of view. These are all out of reach of the chickens when they are roosting.

Panels from the other side, wires are cable tied and wrapped along the top of the outside open runs fence.

This is where the battery, charge controller and trickle charger are mounted, in the eaves inside the covered run.

This is my timer for my automatic door, at the far end of the covered run. It also is wired to a light sensor, but I never use the sensor anymore, just the timer. A dark nasty thunderstorm would shut the door when using the sensor. The timer in the coop for the light is basically the same kind.

Just below the timer, my automatic door with it's fancy rubbermaid protection from weather since it rains sideways here sometimes. We just cut the one long side (short side?) off, and put foam insulating tape between it and the frame. The outside of the door is enclosed by painted plywood, so no weather has ever gotten inside it.

 

[MROO]

Here are some pictures, ...
Here is my coop and enclosed run, you can see my solar panels in the back right. I plan to add a couple of panels in the future for a bit more power, in the summer when all fans are running all the time I run a trickle charger to help right now. I can go several days with no power at all currently. In the winter I don't have to run the trickle charge at all.

WOW - that's awesome!
If you ever decide to visit Maryland, I have a coop for you to rework!

 

[coach723]

Thank you! My ideas and vision mostly, my husband does most of the 'making it happen', I 'go get stuff'. If I told him I wanted another one, he'd probably shoot me! He will be pleased that someone admired his work.

 

[HH.Wench]

I use solar lights from Amazon and they have 3 light settings. I bought my first set 5 years ago, and they still work great after being hammered by 100 degree southern sun, rain, etc.

You can mount them in 2 seconds by simply hanging them on a nail. Bright and dim full beam settings, and a motion setting. They should work fine inside a coop as long as they can get enough light through a window to charge them. I use them for security all over my property.

Search "Litom solar" on Amazon and lots of sizes come up.

 

[Cryss]

Your coop is the slightly larger version of mine. We have the same issues. Have a look at my thread. You might get some ideas from how I did mine.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/altering-my-terrible-ts-coop.1267790/#post-20364469