I had a wooden barn built 30 years ago.  Had it just like I wanted.  Tornado put a huge tree in the middle. If you had to do over. What would you see as a must have ? 4 stalls and feed room. 

I would have a separate entrance for people and horses. I'm tired of tromping through the muddy mess at the front of my barn. I'm awfully sorry for your loss.

I would have stalls with runs, feed room with storage, wash rack, a over hang to park under like for your trailer/tractor or your truck..or to have table and chairs under the over hang to set back and just to relax..

Stalls with runs for sure... but I like to be able to close them in if needed too. 

middle aisle 12 wide  steel instead of wood  depend on where u live  i like a lot of air  12 foot cceiling  condiut and tube water lineslots of outlets

i never did like run outs just me

Wash rack with warm water available if your in a colder climate. and a lean off the side for the trailer or the equipment or to hang out under.

This is my dream barn. Hopefully we will get to build it within a couple of years. 

Stalls are build with panels, so I can change the size of them, or keep the kids in when I need them in, like when bad weather hits or 1 of them gets hurt and needs to be on stall rest or something.

My husband calls it the Taj Mabarn.... , I call it my she-shed!! 

ETA, sorry to hear about your barn, hope nobody got hurt. 

(barn new.png)

barn new.png (91KB - 218 downloads)

Send pic's of your old barn please!

Holy  Cow - sorry about this!

So sorry to hear about your barn! 

However many electrical outlets you think you need, increase that number by at least 50%, lol. Warm water is also helpful, with a concrete wash stall and tack/ feed room. Runs would be awesome, but not necessary in my opinion. Large fans for ventilation in the summertime are key here in the southeast. Windows you can open and close will also help with this too. Also, storage, storage storage. You can never have too much covered storage area, ever. 

Nice,  That potty/toilet sure will come in handy, sure beats peeing in a stall, LOL.. And I like the ideal of having a shower with a washer and dryier, would be great when having friends staying over night. I really like your plans..

Thanks, been working on this for a while now. Want to make sure we have Whatever we need before we start building.
And also, it'll have plenty of outlets for fans. I would also like to get faucets at every stall so no messing around with hoses anymore.... 

#1) Don't build next barn close to any trees .. 

#2) Build your barn pad 18" higher than surrounding ground with slope from pad for roof run off.

#3) If you do runs .. rain gutters on that side are a must to prevent having a mud pit .

#4) 12x12 stalls .. you can make a swinging wall between two for foaling or sick horse.

#5)  Shed row facing south with stalls on this side ... stalls will have 12' swing gates 

so you can use a front end loader to strip stalls instead of fighting with a 4 ft stall door 

and a wheelbarrow .. 

#6) Shed row 16' wide like the alleyway of your barn.. 16' is wide enough to walk around

your rig and unload horses in bad or hot weather ..  12' alleyway you better be skinny to slide

sideways around a dually truck or 102" wide trailer and mirrors dragging on stall fronts ...   

#7) Wash rack .. NO DRAIN IN THE MIDDLE... horses catch horse shoes on it or it gets stepped on and  cover tilts and gets horse injured ..    Ones I have liked .. if inside barn and you do a drain .. put it in a corner to the outside wall and slope floor to the drain ... also you can slope floor to outside wall and when pouring concrete countersink the bottoms of some concrete blocks and let water flow thru the holes to water the grass outside the barn ....  if you build under shedrow .. slope floor so water will run outside the roofline ((under the south end of the shedrow is my favorite .. breeze in the summer time and 99% of the time too cold in winter to wash one anyway ))  .... Drain pipes can be a pain in the xxx .. horses like to crap in wash racks and trailers .. drain will eventually get plugged up .. lol..  If you build the wash rack like you would stocks ... easier to wash horses and saves you money and more usable space .. If you build it like stocks put a foal pen at mares head side to capture foal when palpatting etc etc ... this can be portable .. 

#8) A real "telephone" pole barn for exterior poles .. buy the ones that are almost the same diameter at each end ..  You can use 4x6 treated poles on your stall faces.. they have flat sides .. this means you save money not having to buy trusses to build the barn and no bird crap or nesting problems  .. and a stronger barn ..  I have seen alot of storm areas with metal barns folded up or blown away including the ones that used 4x6 treated poles .. the telephone type poles will form a suction due to the minute tapering and will not come out of the ground...  use tornado (hurrican) clips on all of your rafters .. simple twisted galvenized metal clips that work to hold your roof on ...  The worst thing you can do to your barn, feed/tack/office etc is to put fiberglass insulation in the walls or roof .. rats and birds love that stuff ..    

#9) Lots of ventilation in the barn even in winter time .. keeps horses from getting sick, no condensation dripping from roof and cooler in summer.   Peak venting and the round vents in the peak ends of the barn create a good air flow to remove hot air in summer and healthy air in summer ...   AND FOR GOD'S SAKE ... DO NOT put in ceiling fans to pull the hot air down from the hot roof to blow on your horses ... lol .. you can't beat the 20" stall front fans .. just put in lots of plugins on upper stall fronts using the flexible metal conduit electrical wire ... 

#10) One of the best things you can have is a motion sensor light at each end of the alleyway and at least one under the shedrow (extra light at stock/washrack)...  You don't have to hunt for a light switch in the dark, if horse or someone/something is moving around in the alleyway the lights come on and you can see something is not right at the barn from your house ...  and thieves do not like to be surprised with lights coming on .. lol

#11) I am going to use the nice barn layout posted on here and make a few statements on doing everything 12x12 with 16' alleyway ... use the above suggestions while looking at the diagram .. 

THIS IS A VERY NICE BARN PLAN ... I would use her design but cut it down so everything is 12x16x12 equals 48x60 since there is no hay storage in the barn plan and the extra 12' in length is always handy ...  shedrow is always optional but good idea .. 

#1) The reason I like 12x12 everything is .. lumber and stall panels are standard 12' and available. ALSO bigger than 12x12 encourages a horse to play or easier to spook in something larger and ends up hurt and more to clean .. or harder to catch.

#2) You can copy/paste/print her barn plan and use a sharpie to cut it down to 12x16x12 and 48' or remain with her 60' layout .. use the sharpie to make a dot at each 12 along alleyway for the 4x6 poles .. use an X for the exterior telephone poles at  12' apart.  Draw a straight line to reduce the 30' stalls .. down to 12' ..  OR use the 18' for your shedrow which would make the barn even stronger .. looking at the roof slope .. if you do this as the shedrow.. this side will make the barn longer one side .. you have seen them and they look nice .. a lot of indoor arena's have this roof extension 

#3) Take note barn is running east and west which I Iike .. with feed/tack/office on north side .. stalls and shedrow on south side ... keep in mind .. east end is shadowed of an evening but stays icy and wet longer in the winter vs the west end ....... WEST END is a runaway oven in the summer time so put hay at this end and horses at east end

#4)  NOW THAT I HAVE WRITTEN A BOOK ... I noticed the words ... perfect barn when describing the injured barn ....  so build the sam outlay as it and if any of my suggestions will work for you ... then that is a good thing ....   One last thing .. if you put in a hotwater tank ... do one or two of the 120v instant hot water tanks in parallel .. easy to drain if needed vs the old style american tanks.

GOOD LUCK .. 

THIS IS A VERY WELL THOUGHT OUT BARN PLAN THAT SUITS HER NEEDS .. as you can tell I am more to functional things that have worked for me for years ..   

Thank you, I love the advice!

I don't have hay storage because I am wary of fire, so there will be a separate hay barn. 

Also, I am not planning on having them in there 24/7. Right now they are on pasture/ paddock 24/7. They only come in to eat. But I do like the option to keep them in just in case. Like bad weather or if 1 is hurt. Or if we have to go to a show early and I need them to be somewhat clean... lol.

And since I am in Central Tx we don't get too many icy days. But I do appreciate the time you took to write all this down.

This will hopefully be the last barn we build and I want it to be perfect. 

I have large turnouts on every stall and a 4 foot door that stays open 99% of the time so they can access the turnouts.  I LOVE them.  When its nasty weather its nice that they can come in if they want but go out as well if the sun decides to peek out.  I have 12 foot gates on the end of all my runs and we use a skid steer to clean them out.  It's a really good design and makes cleanup easy.  We scoop the mess in the 12 x 12 stalls out into the run and the skid steer scoops it up then we haul it to the pasture. When you have the large turnouts you don't need to clean out the barn nearly as often.

I have a drain in the middle of my wash bay and that is probably not the best spot. I like the advice to have it off to the side. 

I have dirt in my middle aisle and really wish I would have sprung for the concrete.  Its really windy here and everything gets dusty except the stuff in the closed in feed room and closed in tack room. 

I am also wary of fire so I usually store about 8-10 bales of hay in my feed room at a time and that works very well.  I only bring my horses in twice a day to eat and they don't always need hay depending on how the pastures look. 

I LOVE the wet room amenities.  we have a connecting barndominium but I do wish there was a bathroom on the barn side. 

I have 14 foot wide aisle and that is really nice also. I did raise the foundation and am really glad I did.

In my tack room I ordered the foldable saddle racks and those are amazing.  I also bought the blanket rack and saddle pad rack and that makes my tack room super tidy.  I bought the bridle hooks as well and have been super happy with the organization in there.  I put a minifridge in there which is perfect.

In retrospect (we just built the barn 2 years ago) there isn't much I would change.  I would use limestone crushed rock as a base and cover it with mats instead of the dirt floor.  I didn't realize how windy it was all the time until everything was always dusty.  

This thread is fabulous, although I am sad on why you started it OP. Sorry about that. The summer before my senior year of high school, a tornado ripped the roof off our hip-roof style barn and threw it into the pasture where my barrel horse was. Fortunately he was smart enough to be in the corner of the pasture away from any debris path. Among other things that tornado destroyed....

Anywho, since we are sharing barn plans, this is the premliminary design in my head for my own future barn. House is getting built as we speak, so it may be a couple years until I get a barn, but I'm planning now because I need to know where to place my horse shelters and corrals for the time being before the barn finally goes up.

Tack room will be climate controlled. No more hauling medicine bottles (that can't freeze) back and forth from the house. Planning to have a feed room and/or area on the wall of the wash rack, in the hay storage area. May also have some sort of sprinkler system for safety. I like the idea of having a "huge" stall door that opens up entirely, so you can get a Bobcat or similar right up in there to easily strip stalls. My horses will not be in stalls 24/7 so I think I may put a run on the end stalls that can be used in case of injury, as I really won't need runs often. They'll have both corral and pasture space to roam. Yes, removalable or changable stall walls on a couple of them, so I can make some bigger in case of injury, or if I ever decide to verture into pregnant mares! I also planned it so that I will be able to drive a truck and trailer loaded with square bales right through the barn, so I have to move them as little distance as possible. Hence the very wide walkway. I might even add one more stall, so that I have 6 of them instead of 5. Usually, It won't add too much more to the cost to add more length. (it's the width that will get ya)  And trailer parking next to the talk room, so it is easy to load up with tack. It's a work in progress but dreaming big!