Need Advice for a Living Roof Coop

[Hchung]

Okay, that’s reassuring. Thinking about starting the project sometime this weekend or the next. Hope to have any doubts out of the way before then.

 

[aart]

Right now, my main concern is whether the roof can actually hold up to the weight of the soil. The roof is tiered, which I think will help with the soil slippage and the weight distribution but as I’ve said before, I know absolutely NOTHING about construction or architecture.

As for predator proofing a coop with a living roof, I imagine it’s the same as with a normal coop. It’s just a coop with what is essentially a flower box on top isn’t it? My biggest worry is that the underlying structure I have in place won’t be sturdy enough for all that dirt and it will collapse on top of my chickens.

Coop framing looks pretty sturdy, soil pan spans are short, and there not that much soil there.

Putting aside what a horrible design decision that is—given what I’ve read, I’m worried that the chickens won’t be able to actually get up there with the steepness of the ramp that ends in a wall given the fact that the hole is in the corner. Adjustments will likely be made.

Put a concrete block, or something, under the low end of ramps to reduce steepness. Cleats 4" apart. Roosts are not shown?
Floor pop doors have a plethora of issues, better to put pop door on side of coop into an adjacent run.

What is your climate?
Adding your general geographical location is most helpful :




BTW..nice modeling...and Welcome to BYC!

 

[Hchung]

Coop framing looks pretty sturdy, soil pan spans are short, and there not that much soil there.

Put a concrete block, or something, under the low end of ramps to reduce steepness. Cleats 4" apart. Roosts are not shown?
Floor pop doors have a plethora of issues, better to put pop door on side of coop into an adjacent run.

What is your climate?
Adding your general geographical location is most helpful :

View attachment 1346308


BTW..nice modeling...and Welcome to BYC!

The concrete block is a good idea, I think I’ll put that into practice. As for the roosts, I’m undecided at the moment. I’m either doing two short ones using the wall supports on the long walls or one long roost using the supports from the short walls. Which do you think would be better? I’m planning to use 2x4 fencing brackets so I can remove them for cleaning anyway so it wouldn’t be a big deal to install both anchor points and switch it up to see what the chickens like better.

Climate is pretty temperate. I’m in the hills around the Bay Area in California. Hercules to be exact. No snow or even much rain to worry about normally, though we have been having a bunch of rainy days recently.

As for a pop door in the side of the coop, I’d love to be able to use this option, but I have limited space to work with right now since most of my backyard is covered by an old wooden deck. (It’s rotting in some places and there’s this godawful broken hot tub right in the middle of it. For some reason, when it broke, I’m guessing sometime during the 90’s, the old owners just boarded the thing up instead of getting rid of it.) We just moved into the house a few months ago and plan to rip it all up within the next few years, but right now it’s being a serious pain in the ass. Sigh. I don’t think it would be impossible to modify the coop at that point and shut off the hole in the coop floor in the future.

I’ve included a photo of where I plan to place the coop. It’s a flat space about 12x14 feet. I had to pull up some really old paving stones to make some bare dirt for the chickens. Well, paver sand right now. We’re also going to try growing some grass with a chicken forage mix after tilling up the dirt and mixing it with the sand.

 

[kwhites634]

So, after my husband and I fatefully decided that we wanted to keep chickens, I scoured the internet for a nice coop. However, nothing seemed to meet my standards. For example, something that didn’t seem as if it would fall apart with a light tap or flip over with a soft breeze. (Amazon, you disappoint me.)

Other options were hideously expensive...

And then I thought, we can just build one, can’t we?
We didn’t want to pay for plans so we looked through some free ones. Some of them were cute, but nothing really hit all our checkboxes. Most notably, we wanted to put in a living roof.
So I thought, to hell with it! I’ll design my own! It can’t be too hard, right?
Right...

Please take note that neither my husband or I have built anything that didn’t have IKEA stamped on it somewhere. That is the extent of our experience.

After drawing inspiration from some free plans floating around the internet, here are the results of my messing around in the free version of sketch up. Yes, it is quite basic, I learned everything from scratch over a few days so pardon the noob. I have no idea what I’m doing.
Please help!
Right now, my main concern is whether the roof can actually hold up to the weight of the soil. The roof is tiered, which I think will help with the soil slippage and the weight distribution but as I’ve said before, I know absolutely NOTHING about construction or architecture.
Also, due to the topography of our backyard, the door in the floor of the coop is what makes most sense for us right now. Putting aside what a horrible design decision that is—given what I’ve read, I’m worried that the chickens won’t be able to actually get up there with the steepness of the ramp that ends in a wall given the fact that the hole is in the corner. Adjustments will likely be made.
We plan to line the inside of the coop with sand.
The open holes on the sides of the lowest flower box are where I plan to stick PVC pipe feeders into the run area, which will be surrounded by hardware cloth. Don’t know how to add textures in sketchup so just pretend it’s there. Two sides of the run will have doors for cleaning and letting the chickens out to free range.
Right now we plan to get 3 chickens. But everything I’ve read suggest that the number will only grow, so I’ve tried to keep the size of the coop to around 6 max. Given that we live in a suburban area, I highly doubt the number growing any more than that.
The run area is 6x6 feet and the coop area is 4x6. Hope the math holds up. I wish I could export the sketchup file but sadly... I’m cheap and didn’t pay for the pro version.
Anyway, please give me advice. Thank you for your time!

I'll say one thing for you; you've certainly mastered Sketch Up, which is more than I've been able to do. I'm impressed; looks mighty fine, and I like the design. Unfortunately, I can't comment on the living roof, but I like the concept. Maybe something along the lines of a living wall, using climbing vines that will eventually cover the entire roof surface? Certainly should be cooler in the Summer.

 

[Hchung]

I'll say one thing for you; you've certainly mastered Sketch Up, which is more than I've been able to do. I'm impressed; looks mighty fine, and I like the design. Unfortunately, I can't comment on the living roof, but I like the concept. Maybe something along the lines of a living wall, using climbing vines that will eventually cover the entire roof surface? Certainly should be cooler in the Summer.

Mastered it? That’s something I have neither the time or inclination for. Sketchup is a really powerful tool but unfortunately a lot of the functions are unavailable in the free version.

The living wall is a great idea! But I’d be a little worried that the climbing plants would damage the wood and cutting away the growth from the moving parts like doors and windows would become annoying. It would probably look great with the right care and attention though.