Modified Hoop Coop Design Development

[Victoria-nola]

Quote:
Thanks so much for posting this! We have just built a temporary hoop coop for our young guinea keets and will now be building our Big Coop for the guineas-- they'll be free-ranging but inside the coop at night for safety. We found another hoop coop plan here on BYC called "Permanent Hoop Coop" that we've been engaging with, but we are planning to modify it. I appreciate your thoughts and designs.

What we are planning to do is make a regular perimeter out of cattle panel in the traditional vertical-fence position, then figure out how to attach a curved quonset-hut of cattle panels on top of that so that the resulting building has straight sides with a higher, curved roof. The purpose being the ability to have a higher ceiling. If you have any thoughts about how to make that attachment, I would be grateful to hear them.

I know this is completely off topic so maybe we could move this conversation to an appropriate venue?

Thank you for any info!

@aart
Probably good idea to start a thread with your concept, I would love to participate......but......
the curve of the panels require a sturdy frame to hold panel ends, unless you actually are able to have them bent/formed into a self standing 'hoop'. @aart
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Hey Aart, thank you. Ok yes, that is the main problem, is that the hooped cattle panels for the curved top have to be braced into place. We could create the curved top using cross-ties, then set it into place and brace it, then remove the cross ties in order to maintain our higher ceiling. OR, we could make the lower cross-ties removable, and higher cross-ties out of wood and let them serve permanently as roosts for guineas, who like to roost high, which is why we want to have a high ceiling. We would just need to have about 5'10' to 6' head clearance so the humans can service the coop. Any thoughts?

 

[aart]

Well, the livestock panels are 16' long.......
....... my hoop coop is about 75" tall at the top of curve and about 81" wide at the bottom.

I chose a narrower base width to attain the head clearance.....
...... was going to go 96" wide at base giving a 68" height, which was fine for me at 5-5, but a little short for a 6' buddy.

 

[Victoria-nola]

Well, the livestock panels are 16' long.......
....... my hoop coop is about 75" tall at the top of curve and about 81" wide at the bottom.

I chose a narrower base width to attain the head clearance.....
...... was going to go 96" wide at base giving a 68" height, which was fine for me at 5-5, but a little short for a 6' buddy.

Oh, sorry, yes, we were able to get 72" tall on our current temporary hoop coop with about 88" width. We want to make the new permanent coop with a total ceiling height of 9 or 10' to make the guineas happy, but cross-tie supports on the curved ceiling could be as low as 72" and still allow both us humans-in-charge access. Does that make it clearer?

 

[aart]

Quote: Ah, OK, yes.
So you need 6' tall walls and the tallest livestock panels I know of are horse panels at 5'.
So you may have to figure what panels to use that will stack up to 6'....
.....attach them to forged tposts spaced at width of 'roof panels'......
......or build wall frames out of lumber/posts...
just rambling.....

Or Wait, cross ties could be placed part way up curved roof panel.....extra long tposts on 'walls' to tie bottom of roof panel securely.
Would need some extra lumber bracing along with cross ties to keep curve 'plumb'......
Brain overheating along with body on this scorching day with no AC....have a pretty good idea but need to draw it up ...later.

 

[aart]

Hope this makes sense, and you can read the numbers...ignore decimal, cad set for machining numbers.

 

[Victoria-nola]

Quote: Ah, OK, yes.
So you need 6' tall walls and the tallest livestock panels I know of are horse panels at 5'.
So you may have to figure what panels to use that will stack up to 6'....
.....attach them to forged tposts spaced at width of 'roof panels'......
......or build wall frames out of lumber/posts...
just rambling.....

Or Wait, cross ties could be placed part way up curved roof panel.....extra long tposts on 'walls' to tie bottom of roof panel securely.
Would need some extra lumber bracing along with cross ties to keep curve 'plumb'......
Brain overheating along with body on this scorching day with no AC....have a pretty good idea but need to draw it up ...later.

Yes, the latter is what I was thinking. Use the cattle panels we already have that are 50.75" tall, cross ties placed part way up curved roof panels, exactly. Ack sorry you are without a/c. Hope you have a good fan-- makes a huge HUGE difference.

 

[Victoria-nola]

Hope this makes sense, and you can read the numbers...ignore decimal, cad set for machining numbers.

Wow, THANK YOU. Yes, it totally makes sense. Decimals are no problem. So I'm reading the width of the coop at 84", right?

I used an ellipse calculator http://endmemo.com/geometry/ellipse.php (semi-major axis 9, semi-minor axis of 5.19; target circumference 32) to check what width we'd get if we went with a 9' ceiling instead of 10'. I think that would yield a 10.38 feet width for the coop. It makes complete sense to stay with the 16' length to conform with a single cattle panel to each long side, and your original size would yield both the short sides out of a single panel which is incredibly cost effective, but the difference in the square footage is significant and probably worth the extra panel it would require.

If my math is correct, a 10' ceiling would yield 112sf and the 9' would yield 166sf. At 4sf recommended allowance per guinea, that would be 28 vs. 41 birds allowable. We have 25 keets now, and we hope the flock is self-sustaining so we'd like to have comfortable room for it to grow a bit without having to rebuild or having birds move out/fight over space issues.

Would there be other issues that would make the 9' a poor choice? It would require more hardware cloth, for sure.

 

[aart]

Yes, base width is 84......sorry, I forgot that dimension.

I laid out a 10.38'(172") base width and I'm not sure you can bend a panel into that shallow of curve and still support a flat against the tposts without making an actual bend to the panel ends....but it would probably work without a bend/flat.
You don't have to worry about snow load in Mississippi and you're already going to need some 'trusses'(cross tie and braces).

 

[Victoria-nola]

Yes, base width is 84......sorry, I forgot that dimension.

I laid out a 10.38'(172") base width and I'm not sure you can bend a panel into that shallow of curve and still support a flat against the tposts without making an actual bend to the panel ends....but it would probably work without a bend/flat.
You don't have to worry about snow load in Mississippi and you're already going to need some 'trusses'(cross tie and braces).

No, you put the dimension on there, I just wasn't completely certain that the marking meant the width.

I think you're correct that the 10.38' width would be too shallow a curve. Talked it over with husb and we think going with your original conception would be the best choice-- economical and efficient. If we need to expand it in future conceivably we could actually just lengthen it at that point.

How do you envision the connectivity between the arch and the base, and how would the trusses be constructed?

--V

 

[aart]

Quote: Nope, the only width dimension is the roof panel width of 50, the 84 you see is the length of Tpost..both those dimension are in the side view
The base width dimension should have been in the end view(showing the curve of roof)....but, anyway......

I would suggest that you get a few cattle panels, a couple of 10' 2x4's, a half dozen 7 or 8' Tposts (and a tpost hammer if you don't have one) and play with it.
Sometimes you have to handle a thing and get a feel for it to make fabrication decisions.
I use deck and drywall screws for almost everything....you could just drive some screws into the flat of the 2x4 to hold the panel in a curve, easy to adjust to change it.

I envisioned the flat, knobby side of tpost towards inside of coop, wall panels inside.
Roof panel ends resting on edge of wall panels.
Panels clipped to tpost with fence clips or wire ties and everything else wired or ziptied together.