Barn Building In Alaska

by Marjie Dempster

            It is desirable that Alaskan barns meet the needs for their location within the state; for example, six feet of snow in Valdez, boggy ground around Sterling, or fifty degrees below zero in Fairbanks. We have asked barn owners around Alaska what their barns are like, problems they confronted, and what they think would be important for future barn builders to consider.

            Some people have experienced the catastrophe of a barn collapsing. This has been due mainly to excessive snow on the roof; especially wet snow. Dave Hartman of Hartman Construction in Anchorage built two of the largest horse establishments in Anchorage; Huffman Horse Center and Heatherwood Quarter Horse Stables. In order to determine the strength needed to hold the snow he weighed some cubic foot cubes of snow cut out of the load on his roof. They weighed thirty to forty pounds each. “You should be concerned when there is two to three foot of snow on the roof,” says Hartman.

The Homer area, which gets lots of rain and snow, recently experienced the loss of several buildings. One building that crumpled was a Quonset hut guaranteed not to collapse. Another Homer resident had the misfortune of having her horses eat partially through the wooden supports (a common problem with wood), then when the snow fell, the barn caved in on the horses, killing one. They built a new barn with tin siding and placed it in a windy location where little snow collects on the roof.

            When building a barn, care should be taken to make sure the roof runs in the direction that snow will not shed in the doorways. Roland O’Shea of Greenfield Stable in Wasilla says that having a four foot overhang in front of each outside doorway keeps snow and ice from building up in the entryway. Some people use some sort of tractor to push snow away from unwanted places as it falls. Without heavy equipment it would mean shoveling.

            Lots of barn owners either would like to have, or already have roofs that don’t shed snow and barns strong enough to hold the load. This can be partly accomplished by using shingles or installing a snow fence on the roof, preventing the snow from sliding off. The other part is having a strong support system. The trusses and spans have to be built stout enough. Nancy Larsen of Fairbanks uses two-by-sixes that can be removed when not needed to brace the peak of their barn in the winter. These two-by-sixes slide into the rafters and run up to the peak of the roof.

            Pole barns with either wood or metal siding are common. The wooden posts (can use telephone poles) are often set in concrete. In the Fairbanks area, where perma-frost is a big concern, it is better to set the posts in gravel. (The same goes for any area with wet ground). Mr. Larsen, who is a millwright carpenter, built a unique “floating” barn to help him with the perma-frost problem. He buried two-inch pipe three feet down where all the walls would run. These pipes had brackets pointing upwards. He then fitted the wall partitions onto these brackets.

When building you need to watch out for plywood walls, they should be a minimum of ¾” thick, any less and there is a possibility of having a horse kicks through them and getting ripped up badly by the sharp splinters. The larger, more powerful horses should have thicker wood. Second lumber can be bought at a lumber yard (it is not good enough for building houses but is fine for building barns) and can be applied board-and-batten style for the siding.

If John Nauman of Chugiak were to build over again, he would build an all steel barn with steel posts and girders so he wouldn’t need so many posts, wouldn’t worry about rot or rust; the structure would be easier to move, would look good, wouldn’t need painting, would go up fast, and would not be too expensive. His horses would have a hard time chewing that one down! As an alternative to steel, aluminum sheets are lighter than the steel and also won’t rust. Care must also be taken with any metal siding. Usually a wood ‘kicker panel’ is installed on the inside of a metal building to make sure a horse cannot kick through the steel. Without the ‘kicker panel’ a horse can kick through the steel, when the leg is pulled back through the torn, sharp edged metal can peel off all of the tissue down to the bone. Hartman says when he builds something, he wants it to last. He thinks a steel structure with cement block or pre-cast cement is a good way to go; being durable, non-eatable, and won’t kick down.

            In addition to the basic structure, there are always important details to consider when building. Most of the people interviewed did not insulate their barns. Some hung plastic strips or pieces of carpet over the open doorways to bring the temperature up as much as ten degrees. Airtight barns tend to have stale air. Some barns are open at the eves, helping with the ventilation and cost of building. It might be nice to have a stall that could be heated incase of a mare giving birth or a horse getting injured during a cold snap. Leaving the snow on the roof also helps insulate the barn, although it may cause leaking when temperatures warm. It is important to make sure the horses can get out of the wind. One resident of Fairbanks, where it gets very cold, said that the most important thing for horses to have in frigid weather is not necessarily a heated barn, but free access to warm water.

            Drainage and building where the sun hits are crucial points to consider when deciding where to put the new barn. At the foot of a hill is not a good location, because water runs down the hill and collects on the barn floor. Also snow may shed, depending on the slant of the roof, off of the barn on the side towards the hill and lean inward, putting too much side pressure on the walls. Amber Cabana of Homer says she would like to build a barn on top of a mound, bring in lots of gravel and sand for a good pad, build the barn strong enough to handle the snow load, use shingles on the roof so the snow won’t shed, and put on rain gutters. Abby Ala , who runs a stable near Soldotna, put lots of effort and money into making a two-acre gravel pad , which includes the parking lot, for under her barn; and she is glad she did. This is helpful in areas that get mucky in the spring and fall.

            Sandy Shacklett of Wasilla says the best stall floor she ever had was constructed of a framework of green treated four-by-four’s, topped with a floor of two-by-four’s running perpendicular to the four-by-four’s, then covered with rubber mats. There was a quarter- inch gap between each two-by-four to allow water passage and a gravel pad underneath. Green treated wood should last for thirty years. Rubber mats are not slippery, comfortable to stand on, and easy to clean. They are expensive, but worth saving for! Cement floors are hard on horses’ joints when stood on for long periods, somewhat slippery when horses are shod, and difficult to remove frozen manure from. A less expensive way to go is a gravel pad or packed sand under rubber mats; or simply a layering of gravel, sand, then woodchips. For floors in the hallways or feed rooms, one man liked “in floor radiant slab heating”(a system involving hot water running through pipes that have been imbedded in the cement floor).

            Storing hay in the barn loft is very handy, but aware of the fire hazard. A plus to having a loft would be to have trap doors to toss hay down to each horse; or, how about rotating feeders on the doors of each stall that can be filled from the hallway. Grain bins help to keep horses out of the grain should they get loose; so does a feed room with a locking door.

            A point on lighting, remember that fluorescent lights have trouble coming on at temperatures below zero.

            Sliding doors are nice but when used as an outside door, they inevitably get dirt or snow kicked against them, which freezes, making closing and opening the doors a chore in winter.

            Drainage, choice of materials, strength of structure, flooring, location, frost heaves, snow load or shedding, lighting, and doorways, (and available finances[of course] ) are all considerations for a barn remodeler or builder. Now that you are armed with all these ideas, may I wish you, “Happy barn building!”

(Left) The barn has already shed enough snow for a path to be shovel for access to the stalls and additional snow on the roof is starting to slide.

(Right) The same barn after the additional snow slid off the roof.  This time a tractor was called in to the clear the way. After determining the structure is strong enough to carry the snow load, a snow fence will be installed to prevent this form occurring in the future.

Something else to consider is the impact this snow would have had on any exterior walls. If you look at some metal buildings they will be dented from these snow piles.