# Barn Types



## rachels.haven (Apr 12, 2021)

We're going to be getting a barn built for my goat herd. It's going to have at least three large stalls and a milk room and will need to have a loft for hay storage (might consider ground storage). Price gap between post and beam and pole barn types is pretty big BUT in your opinion, if you were us which should we go for? Also, what kind of flooring is best in your opinion? Any other tips?


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## Baymule (Apr 12, 2021)

My horse barn is a pole barn with a dirt floor. The feed and tack room is floored with 3/4" plywood. The sheep barn is just a roof off the side of a portable building, open on 3 sides. 

Our climate difference leaves me unqualified to offer advice. While I deal with heat, you deal with cold that I have no experience with. 

Well, here goes...... I love the post and beam, but this is not your forever home. Will it add value to your home in the amount that you spend? How long will you live there to enjoy this higher priced barn? Would post and beam appeal more than a pole barn to some snooty future buyer? 

Flooring? Mine are dirt floors, but I am not milking goats or anything else for that matter. What are your choices? Concrete? That would be like a slab of ice in the winter, maybe you could put in radiant floor heating. Wood raised floor? You'd have to cover that with something pee-proof. Vinyl? I'm starting to like the post and beam idea with concrete floor with radiant heating.......   

How popular is homesteading with goats, would you be building somebody's dream barn? Or would you have to come up with a secondary life for the barn as in converted to...... a wedding venue? Welding shop? Man cave?


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## rachels.haven (Apr 13, 2021)

We're not sure if it will add value to the house. Tearing down the chicken house will for sure. We're moving to a mixed income town that is the last one before towns start to get rural, empty, and looking down on their luck(in this place I'm hoping for fewer rich, out of touch fruit loops who may be college educated but have forgot the 1st rule of college (you know nothing!)). DH described it as more blue collar. There are a few rich horse properties, and more (still overpriced because of what state it is and the current market) normal houses, and many run down ones. This house isn't a decadent looking house from the street, but it was own by a contractor guy the home inspector described as OCD (uh, in more colorful words) so it's very nice and kept up. It's a farmhouse, not a modern flowy open floor plan McMansion.
Because of the ambiguity I was going to approach the issue from a purely practical standpoint and build it for milking goats but with stalls big enough for horses (milk room could become a tack/feed room because here at least people like them plumbed and sealed off, we learned house hunting).

I wasn't sure about the differences between post and beam and pole. My current tiny post and beam barn does stay significantly warmer than the outside. It's concrete floored inside. The goats do not mind the temps, but the poo freezes to the floor making winter mucking very difficult until it thaws (THEN it's a dig out)...Now Baymule brings up the idea of heated floors...Oooo, now I have a new dream. Non frozen floors in the winter. The ability to shovel all year round and skip the end of February 6' of solid thawing manure party. I didn't think about that. That would be incredibly nice.

We were leaning towards a pole barn from a saving money standpoint, but post and beam are more common in this area and we can technically afford it (...but you don't have money by spending it, it's kind of nice to have a good sized buffer especially when you have health issues and/or kids in the family so hence the idea of a pole barn).

I guess bottom line is, spending money kind of stinks, and how in this situation is the best way to do it.


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## Beekissed (Apr 13, 2021)

There's a third option that may work out to be more versatile in the long run and not run you as much money....


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## rachels.haven (Apr 13, 2021)

Good point, I forgot about that kind. Thank you!


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## Baymule (Apr 13, 2021)

Frozen floors in the winter?  Frozen poop stuck to the frozen floor?  Eeewww

I like my dirt floors. Just throw more waste hay, leaves, pine shavings or whatever down until I feel like digging it out or until I need it in the garden or on a pasture.

I didn’t know that about frozen floors. Yeah, absolutely go with radiant heat!


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## B&B Happy goats (Apr 13, 2021)

Having had goats in NH I would suggest dirt foors for everywhere  except your milk room...much easier  to clean and you can have sand delivered when you need to refresh what you have removed during the winter mucking it out...that's  my two cents worth of experience


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## Alaskan (May 25, 2021)

I am happy with our dirt floor barn.

It is a pole barn.

Bottom is all open,  big hole in first floor to reach the top floor hay loft.


Big sliding doors front and back so the truck can drive through.  Big front sliding door also has a man door.

Only thing we did wrong is we didn't put a stout enough beam in to attach our winch.  We would use a winch to pull up round bales.

Also...  spouse wanted it "pretty"  which means the roof and doors are lined up wrong.... as in the snow dumps right at the door.

I liked the open bottom floor (no stalls)... we made the first floor with quality head space for horses rearing.  And even with the 4 pillars in the barn, the horses never pinned one another anywhere.

Worked out nicely. 

The horses used it as a run-in.  They had full access to outside,  a small paddock.

The barn and paddock were only used in winter.  The insulated water trough was in the barn.

When we switched to goats...

For goats the poles were helpful since we used the poles to section up the bottom level into 1/3 for a goat stall.

But horses and goats...  dirt floor worked great.

I just used a milking stand to milk.  The milk was for house consumption,  ...  eh...


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## rachels.haven (May 25, 2021)

Yeah, my spouse wants it "pretty" too. I will probably give into him there (provided it's functional) because the worst that should happen is that he has us build a horse barn with a plumbed/insulated/heated room for milking. We are waiting for our moved out of house to sell and an extra paycheck in the bank before proceeding.


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## Ridgetop (May 25, 2021)

*MOVING?!  Are we just hearing about this or have I lost your thread?*

You had nothing but problems where you were before so moving out further will be mus=ch nicer for you and your family.

Whatever you decide to put up, make it *TWICE AS BIG *as you think you will need.  Whether you need the extra space for animals or not, the additional room comes in very handy for lots of things.  If your children decide to do 4-H they will want all sorts of animals for the junior auction.  Large barns can be converted to workshops which are very popular when selling.

Dirt floors for livestock are the way to go.  If you are worried about the cold when milking in the winter, enclose the milk room and it will stay appreciably warmer.  Concrete floors for the tack and feed rooms make clean up easier.  Loft space is great.  Building the barn tall enough for a loft will not cost that much more in construction costs since there is still only one roof.  Make enough room for a staircase to the loft instead of a ladder access.  Don't forget to add water, electricity, and drainage.  

So exciting!!!


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## rachels.haven (May 25, 2021)

Yes! We moved out to a more farmy, down to earth town and put up a fence around a hay field, making it a pasture. Now all that's left is to sell the old place, take down the old chicken barn and machine shed before either fall on anyone, and build the goat barn. I think we're on track.

And yes, yes, yes, I agree. We will do as much of that as we can within financial constraints (but I think if we sell our old house soon in the current market we will be pretty okay).


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## Ridgetop (May 26, 2021)

So happy to hear that you have moved to a better location for your family and your livestock.  If you are farther out in the country you might want to check into a generator for those Massachusetts winter power shortages.

Keep us posted on what is happening!


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## rachels.haven (May 26, 2021)

Ridgetop said:


> So happy to hear that you have moved to a better location for your family and your livestock.  If you are farther out in the country you might want to check into a generator for those Massachusetts winter power shortages.
> 
> Keep us posted on what is happening!


Hehehehe. House came with a generator on propane. We're also going to be looking into solar (and geothermal) because the grid us unreliable. Everyone likes solar panels and propane...


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## Ridgetop (May 26, 2021)

Yes!  Forgot to tell you to get a propane generator only.  Apparently propane stores forever unlike gas or diesel.

So clever of you to get a house with one already there.  Solar is easy to install yourself - DS1 and DS2 put solar panels on our barn.  Unfortunately solar panels are only good for about 10 years before they start to go bad.  That is one of the reasons we never had them installed on our house.  Commercial installers tell you you will make your money back in about 10 years.  Then just as you expect to see a return the panels start to go bad.  Quote on our house was $30,000.  No battery storage.  Batteries were another $20,000!


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## rachels.haven (May 26, 2021)

Yes, I heard about the solar scams. Pity. Thanks for the heads up. We will figure out something. Right now the moving dust needs to settle.


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## Kusanar (Jul 7, 2021)

rachels.haven said:


> Yes, I heard about the solar scams. Pity. Thanks for the heads up. We will figure out something. Right now the moving dust needs to settle.


I know I'm a little late to the party, but, also please look into the liability of hooking solar power into the grid. You have to carry a larger homeowners insurance policy if you do hook into the grid because if they shut the power off to the main grid to do work and your solar pushes power back onto it and fries someone then that is on the homeowner. Now, there is a little device that should be installed that will prevent that, but as everyone knows, things go bad and if that device goes bad it can easily kill someone.


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## rachels.haven (Jul 7, 2021)

Another good heads up. Thank you.


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## misfitmorgan (Jul 9, 2021)

There are 100s of companies that offer "pretty" pole buildings, or steel buildings instead of the standard box with a peak. I tend to think any pole barn that has the double overhangs looks way nicer then the boxes.

This place has a bunch of different options. I've even seen places that will cover the entire barn with wood instead of metal. 
https://www.superiorbuildings.net/agricultural-pole-buildings

This is a pole barn and I dont think many would say it was not pretty.


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## rachels.haven (Jul 9, 2021)

The barns they have (and similar pole) are beautiful. The challenge will be finding someone in a snobby area that will build them. We are actually going that route though.


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## misfitmorgan (Jul 9, 2021)

You might have to get someone from a goodly distance away to do it. When I owned a construction company we would travel up to 1.5hrs one way to go to jobs and just figured the gas and time into the bill, we were still cheaper then most local to them people because we were driving into new york state. Used to live in bradford, pa which is right on the border there.

Does the company you are looking at going thru offer subcontractor services at all?

We are opting for a style similar to the one beekissed posted.
It is going to look similar to this with the wooden pony walls and have an end wall along the back.


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## Alaskan (Jul 9, 2021)

misfitmorgan said:


> There are 100s of companies that offer "pretty" pole buildings, or steel buildings instead of the standard box with a peak. I tend to think any pole barn that has the double overhangs looks way nicer then the boxes.
> 
> This place has a bunch of different options. I've even seen places that will cover the entire barn with wood instead of metal.
> https://www.superiorbuildings.net/agricultural-pole-buildings
> ...


Ah... true... my barn is very plain.


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## farmerjan (Jul 9, 2021)

@rachels.haven ... you need to sit down with a piece of paper..... and make a sketch of what you wanted in a barn.... take the experiences of what you had... and while sitting milking I know you must have thought... hey, I wish this was here, or I wish I could turn around this direction..... or it would work better for the goats to come in here and go out there.... all those little things of what you would have preferred when you were doing x and y would have been better.... then find something that you can "design" the inside the way you want......
I did it when I would bring the dairy cows in to get milked or have calves go on them..... and have some ideas in my mind of what I would prefer if I ever have a chance to have my nurse/milking cows where I want them....


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## rachels.haven (Jul 9, 2021)

farmerjan said:


> @rachels.haven ... you need to sit down with a piece of paper..... and make a sketch of what you wanted in a barn.... take the experiences of what you had... and while sitting milking I know you must have thought... hey, I wish this was here, or I wish I could turn around this direction..... or it would work better for the goats to come in here and go out there.... all those little things of what you would have preferred when you were doing x and y would have been better.... then find something that you can "design" the inside the way you want......
> I did it when I would bring the dairy cows in to get milked or have calves go on them..... and have some ideas in my mind of what I would prefer if I ever have a chance to have my nurse/milking cows where I want them....


That is one of the first things I did. I know what I want floor plan/layout-wise for the handling/milking flow. OH I MISS IT SO MUCH. We got a new barn lead today. The guy may be available before the end of the year. I sent a call and a text (voicemails are not the guy's favorite apparently). Now I need to cross my fingers and pray.


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## Simpleterrier (Jul 9, 2021)

Stay away from radiant for a barn unless u want.to use it as a shop some day unless u like burning money. Also stay away from geo thermal u don't.get your money out of them before they go bad.


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## rachels.haven (Jul 10, 2021)

Good to know about geothermal. I'd only use radiant floor for a barn if it could be turned off and on by a switch- on the day before cleanout to thaw manure, off normally-and this is not the barn for it. The theme of this barn will be good ENOUGH.


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