Vent protection from blowing snow

[avjudge]

That was a storm unlike any other! Almost 24 hours of continuous snowing, over 2 feet of snow accumulation, and winds so high that there’s no snow on any of the house roofs or trees! It blew in drifts 4 feet high, and got UNDER my fancy awnings and into the coop!!! So I kept having to go clear snow from INSIDE the coop despite the only unprotected vent being completely sealed with plastic. This coop has been through a lot of snow, but I’ve never had to clear snow from inside of it like this I don’t know if this is preventable either, short of sealing all the vents, but a full 24 hours of them pooping and breathing in there… with no ventilation… can’t be good either How can I prepare better for next time?

A few years ago - was 2015 the snowy winter? - I was living in Somerville Mass. My house had a carriage house, about 15’ deep, with two double swinging doors on the front. The doors didn’t fit super tight, but didn’t have particularly large gaps. In a couple of the storms that winter we had a narrow drift of snow from the door all the way to the back wall. It was amazing the amount of snow that could make it in through those small cracks, and the distance it could travel. And in my driveway, with houses on 2 sides and the carriage house on the 3rd, and narrow gaps for the wind to blow between, I had areas scoured clear of snow while a few feet over there was a drift 3-4x the depth of the snowfall. It was pretty amazing. Gave me a new appreciation of the standstill caused by the blizzard of ‘78. (In ‘78 I lived up here and we got significantly more snow - but no wind. Plows were out while it snowed & then we were all back on the road. Great skiing.)

Can you tell if the snow mostly came in one or two of the sides? If so, I would imagine the best solution would be to make the vents on those sides closeable and have sufficient protected vents on the others to provide the necessary airflow. If the snow seems to have been eddying & coming in all sides, I know some people here have internal baffles, sort of a false ceiling under the vents to catch snow (though in this sort of storm the snow might just blow all the way across & down onto the chickens anyway).

EDIT: just saw the top “Similar Thread” is “Coop Fail” where just this sort of interior baffle didn’t work to keep the snow away from the chickens! Oh well! Back to the drawing board.

 

[Sally PB]

I love this idea! Plus, it's something I could build myself.

 

[The Moonshiner]

I thought this thread was gonna be about chicken's vents and protection from blowing snow.
I was questioning if that was a real thing. Guess not.

 

[Iluveggers]

I thought this thread was gonna be about chicken's vents and protection from blowing snow.
I was questioning if that was a real thing. Guess not.

Leave it to a male….

 

[The Moonshiner]

I just saw the title and thought holy cr@p how hard does the snow blow there that you'd need to worry about that?

 

[aart]

I just saw the title and thought holy cr@p how hard does the snow blow there that you'd need to worry about that?

Pull up your pants dude, your venthole is showing.

 

[The Moonshiner]

Pull up your pants dude, your venthole is showing.

Aart, Dude quit, stop. Eyes up here.
Now can we get back on topic?

 

[Big Doggie]

Aart, Dude quit, stop. Eyes up here.
Now can we get back on topic?

I need to add this to my coop article (as well as all the other modifications I've done since building the coop), but figured I'll start by posting it here, in case it can help somebody else protect their vents.

So, I was extra generous with the ventilation when building my coop, because ventilation is extremely important. The tops of my walls don't meet the roof and there's a gap about 6" tall that wraps around on all sides, for ventilation, which is open year-round, in all weather. This all works fine except for the front side, where the vent is more like 8" tall and because the coop is a lean-to, that side is less protected than the others, despite the overhang. This is fine for rain, but snow, being lighter, gets blown around a lot more, and blows into the coop through that one vent (but not the others). So I built an awning for it to protect it, while still leaving it open for ventilation. I didn't feel like measuring angles and cutting precise pieces, so I did it as simply and easily as I could. It's just a board the width of the coop, attached at the top via two heavy duty hinges, with two triangles on the sides to keep it propped open. The triangles are not attached to the coop, they just rest against it. They also provide protection on the sides. I had leftover shingles from when I built the coop's roof, so I nailed those to the top of the awning to protect the wood. With the shingles, the awning is quite heavy and stays in place without flapping or banging at all, even though it's only attached with hinges at the top. Straightforward and easy, and does the job great. We've had one significant snowstorm since I added the awning at the beginning of this winter, and there has been zero snow in the coop this time.

There is just one aesthetic thing that will bug me about the awning... I didn't feel like cutting the bottom edge of the awning at an angle so that the overhanging shingle ends (which I scalloped, for a nicer look) would hang perpendicular to the ground. They are bent and nailed to the edge of the board, and because the board is at an angle, the overhanging shingle ends now point slightly in towards the coop, not straight down. I'm a perfectionist and this is going to bother me, but I was too busy and tired to angle the edge, so I'll just have to live with it It still looks nice, and it does the job, which is what matters.

Here's what the vents looked like before the modification (the vent on the left, above the door, is the one in question):

View attachment 2956886

And here's the awning:
View attachment 2956883

View attachment 2956885

View attachment 2956884

View attachment 2956887

View attachment 2956888

I thought my overhangs were ok but they were no match for the winds we got. Poor girls had 2” of snow in the coop and 3” in the run. They wouldn’t get off the roosts. I’ll have to engineer something soon.

 

[aart]

I thought my overhangs were ok but they were no match for the winds we got. Poor girls had 2” of snow in the coop and 3” in the run. They wouldn’t get off the roosts. I’ll have to engineer something soon.

My overhangs with fascia are pretty good, but when the lower roof gets full of snow and can blow into the upper soffits, so I installed furnace filter to keep the snow out.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/ventilation-baffling.75434/

 

[K0k0shka]

It was definitely like no other. It snowed in my coop too. I think I finally got it to stop about mid afternoon for the most part. UGH! going by your totals I am going to guess you are in Eastern MA?

Yep, Boston suburbs. Sorry to hear it snowed in your coop, too

are those cochins? what is the one that is by itself in that picture?

No Cochins there. The two on the left with the black heads are Double Silver Laced Barnevelders, the rest are all English Orpingtons of different colors. There's one not pictured that's a Silver Laced, the yellow ones are Lemon Cuckoo, and the dark one by the feeder and the orange one by herself drinking are both Red Partridge, though the dark one didn't get the memo and looks nothing like the breed

Here's a better picture of the one that's by herself:

And her sister who's supposed to be the same breed and color, but she mixed up her colors and now they are reversed - orange lacing on black, instead of black lacing on orange