How to Make Every Square Foot Count When You Design Your Barn
While you might dream of rolling hills and extensive acreage for your horse barn, sometimes you have to make the most of smaller spaces. Your barn design and planning become even more important when you’re working with limited acreage. You can make the most of your smaller property with these tips.
Check Your Zoning Requirements First
Before you start to build or even plan your barn, carefully check your zoning requirements. Pay attention to factors like setbacks, since they can significantly limit where you’re able to position permanent structures.
It’s also essential to check into your agricultural zoning requirements, as well as any regulations that might affect you if you plan on running your equine property as a business. Verify how many horses you’ll be able to have given your property size, and then make sure you’re planning your barn appropriately.
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Consider Temporary Fencing Options
Attentive pasture management is essential when you have multiple horses on limited acreage. As the seasons change, you may need to redesign the layout of your paddocks.
Consider investing in a quality, permanent perimeter fence, such as one made out of HDPE Fencing, which is exceptionally durable. Then, choose an electric fence to divide the larger pasture into separate, smaller pastures. You can easily reposition the electric fencing if needed, and you can also use it to section off additional portions of the pasture until you find an arrangement that works well for your horses year-round.
When you’re capable of redesigning your pasture layout, you can rotate grazing so no one pasture becomes over-grazed. You can also keep horses off of pasture areas when they’re too wet, preserving your grazing.
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Prepare to Address Mud
Mud is an issue on most equine properties, but it can be a considerable challenge when you’re working with limited acreage. If your acreage doesn’t support the number of horses you have, your horses can damage and wear down the footing, especially in high-traffic areas like spaces near pasture gates. If your ground becomes overworked or areas are worn down so that they’re low-lying, you’ll soon have mud.
Mud Control Grids can help. You can install these grids with minimal site preparation, and they help maximize water drainage while optimizing traction for horse and human safety. These grids are a low-maintenance option that can help solve your mud problems.
Design Your Barn with the Property Topography in Mind
Before you start planning your barn design, take a careful look at your property’s topography. While you can change the topography to a degree, doing so can be expensive. You can save money if you work with the property’s natural topography as much as possible.
Look at features like the property’s slope, any steep grades, and any low-lying areas, since these will help you determine where water runoff travels. You’ll want to position your barn and riding ring at higher points on the property, if possible. Depending on the layout, you may need to grade the property and create swales to prevent water runoff from traveling into your barn.
Don’t forget also to evaluate factors like the location of a well, if there is one, as well as existing utility lines. Look at the presence of thick trees and think about how they’ll create shade at different times of the day. The more you can evaluate the existing property before you start to build, the more potential issues you can avoid later on.
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Consider Alternative Barn Designs
If you have minimal acreage, you may need to explore some alternative barn designs. A traditional six- or eight-stall barn with a center aisle requires significant space, but if you design a shedrow barn, you may be able to fit the same number of stalls into a space where a traditional barn layout just won’t fit.
Stay open to some alternative designs, and don’t be afraid to think outside of the box. Maybe creating two separate shedrow structures will work best for your property’s layout. Or perhaps you need to make a separate building for hay storage, which is beneficial when it comes to barn fire prevention. 
Talk with other barn owners in your general area about what layout works for them and why. If you’re considering different layouts, see if you can find someone in your community with that type of barn and ask if you can visit their property. When you talk with barn owners, ask what they like and what they don’t like about the layout. Be sure also to ask what they would do differently if they were to build their barn again.
Use Vertical Space
Storage can be a challenge when you have limited acreage for your barn layout, so plan your barn to make use of vertical space. For example, the space above your horse stalls can make excellent storage for horse blankets when they’re not in use. Build shelves and cubbies up high in your tack room and feed room for extra storage for items that you don’t use often.
You might also explore different storage solutions designed for barns, like Blanket Bars, to maximize storage space on your stall doors. There are also plenty of folding and swinging blanket and saddle pad storage solutions to help maximize your storage.
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Contact American Stalls as You Design Your Barn
At American Stalls, we can custom-design and build barn components specifically for your barn. Whether you need custom Horse Barn Windows or top-quality Horse Stall Systems that will fit your barn’s dimensions, we can help. We encourage you to contact us as early in the barn design and planning process as possible, since we can work with you to identify solutions as you plan your barn. Contact us today at (855) 957-8255 or email us at sales@americanstalls.com to schedule a sales and design consultation.
