Oakley Guy, did you choose a coop build? If you haven't yet, I just want to say that the keep it simple coop looks great to me. Of COURSE you can add windows! If you put them on the lee side, you can make them of mesh and not even cover them. (Mine in my hoop coop are uncovered mesh, and the chickens do FINE in northern Colorado.) I have used deck boxes about this size as huddle/overnight shelter, and as many as a dozen LF LS have crammed themselves into a single box (rather than use the several I provided them). Not recommending it, though.
Some things about this basic coop: if you notice in the photos, it is located under a covering in a pen. Using it with overhead protection allows for the lid to be open even in winter, which is absolutely the best way to ventilate, essential to keeping your birds alive, in both summer and winter. In one of my coops, there is an opening - a pop door to a run, actually - on the bottom, on the west side; there is a mesh window in each of two man doors opening to the south. That is ALL. And the ventilation in this coop is superb: cool air comes in from the bottom and exits as warmer air at the door openings. A breeze is actually CREATED with this arrangement. This is a bigger coop that came with the property, btw. For my deck box coops, I pounded 3' rebar stakes in the ground to form support for the pvc pipe looped over the boxes, and attached tarp to cover. This allows me to keep the lid to the box cracked open for ventilation in the summer AND in winter.
Another thing about the coop: the second version is sloped, and I'm guessing this was to give the rooster a little more room to flaunt his magnificent tail. BUT, roosters sleep with their tail DOWN, so the higher back isn't really needed for that. It's not really high enough to shed snow, either, and if it were, it would all be falling down to the front, not fun if you don't like wading through puddles /snowbanks to service your coop after a good precipitation. Again, a cover over your coop will solve a lot of that problem. You can use the first iteration and save on waste plywood. You could also use the second iteration and slope the roof to the back instead of to the front. Depends how high you want to be lifting food and water into your coop.
I like to use external feed and water vessels that open into the inside of the coop - easy with horizontal nipples and the popular bucket feeders; these make it especially easy to service the coop in winter. Like externally mounted nesting boxes. I love Ute Pass's bucket nest boxes.
Consider using a lighter IR reflective material for the lid/roof.
I am not too sure about tipping the coop over, hauling it around, and emptying into a compost. Making the front into double doors that swing outward makes sense to me for cleaning, but there goes "simple." Also, in the interest of reducing simplicity, I would have it be essentially without a floor, having just earth and deep litter for the bottom. Design is everything with this - and research.
I HAVE NOT built this coop; I have a lot of used plywood about, and think it's a good doable design for some of my needs. It's a good starte coop, it will serve a breeder group, it can be an isolation/recuperation coop, it can be a brooder coop, and it can provide overnight shelter for several chickens in winter - if you take care of the ventilation issues and any other protection it might need from the elements. I like the clear directions. Am not that handy myself, but I think I could make one of these. You can always use the excess plywood for making feed and water stands, maybe nest boxes, and you'll be glad you have it.
this is what we threw together, the bottom half is plywood the rest is scrap pallets and wood scavenged alot from where we people illegally dump off the highway.
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