Modified hoop coop

[KSOILES]

I live in the suburbs and have a narrow odd-shaped space to build a chicken run. The run that came with my coop is small and short (not walk-in.) I’m thinking af building a modified hoop coop, with a narrower base like a arched trellis. It would be framed similarly, with cattle panels reinforced with hardware cloth. I’d like to still have a door for run access. But I would like to place my Omlet Eglu Cube perpendicular at one end, butting it up to the side of the run (similar to the example below), for ease of egg and cleaning. Thought I’d ask for thoughts, tips, insight before proceed.

 

[aart]

with a narrower base

How narrow?
It should work.

 

[KSOILES]

How narrow?
It should work.

I would need to go down to 4 feet. Thinking I might need to shorten the panels a foot or two to give some more structural rigidity. Otherwise it might be too tall.

 

[KSOILES]

So it would be 4’ tall be 12’ long.

 

[mowin]

A 16' cattle panel set 8' wide will give you just about 6' in height. So in theory, a 8' panel set 4' wide should be around 3' high. I'm thinking 12' at 4' wide should give you around a 6' hight.

 

[KSOILES]

Sorry, that should have said 4' WIDE and 12' long. So narrow and taller.

 

[Krugerrand]

Sorry, that should have said 4' WIDE and 12' long. So narrow and taller.

For my portable isolation coop, I cut the length down to the include 19 lines. With 8" spaced mesh, that should be 144" in total length - 12'. At 48" wide, the arch measures 64" high.

That's not high enough to stand under, but might help you figure out what you want to do.

My regular run is cattle panel. I also used cattle panel to make the front and back walls. They offer a nice bit of support for hardware cloth and support cutting out openings, too. If you go that route, map out what you want to cut out and use that to guide how wide narrow you want to make things.

Also, keep in mind when you determine your height that if you use wood chips or something like that, they 'raise the ground level' so you lose some height to that.

 

[KSOILES]

For my portable isolation coop, I cut the length down to the include 19 lines. With 8" spaced mesh, that should be 144" in total length - 12'. At 48" wide, the arch measures 64" high.

That's not high enough to stand under, but might help you figure out what you want to do.

View attachment 3530920

My regular run is cattle panel. I also used cattle panel to make the front and back walls. They offer a nice bit of support for hardware cloth and support cutting out openings, too. If you go that route, map out what you want to cut out and use that to guide how wide narrow you want to make things.

View attachment 3530930

Also, keep in mind when you determine your height that if you use wood chips or something like that, they 'raise the ground level' so you lose some height to that.

That’s very helpful! Thank you! I’m planning on building the base of the frame using two by sixes. That should help to hold the construction sand in place that I want to use for flooring. But great point about it reducing the height.

 

[Krugerrand]

FYI, the bent arch is catenary.

catenary, which is the shape of a chain hanging from two equal endpoints. You can illustrate by holding a small chain in both hands and watching as you move the ends in or out. The arch is the mathematical result of inverting the shape.
https://davesgarden.com/community/forums/fp.php?pid=4860656#b

I was never able to find an easy calculator that let me change the length and width to get the height. If you find one please post it.

 

[paintedChix]

Complete circular arc calculator

I got this from someone else's thread here on BYC & saved it years ago. I'm using it now to calculate how much I need to raise both side of my CP to get my coops to be 10' wide...