The bottom 3' of each side of the barn is one long sheet of piece metal. The rest 6' are covered with wire screen and there are 4 wooden shutters per side of the barn. 2 for the top and 2 for the bottom. I can open and close however many I want depending on how nice the weather is, where the wind is coming from, etc. I'll give more details about how we built the shutters below. Originally we used Canvas tarps (that were waterproof/waxed) to cover the screens. But, those were a nightmare. And due to the high amount of humidity out here in NE Oklahoma, the tarps grew mold on them quickly. They were also a pain when it came to rolling them up and down.
During the hot summer weather, we have an air conditioning unit that we run. It keeps the barn around 20 degrees cooler during and the day and gets it down to the mid 70's to high 60's at night. It's definitely been a life saver in the summer!
In the winter, spring & fall depending on how nice the weather is, we can have all 4 sides of the barn open to allow tons of airflow in. During storms & in really cold or windy weather we keep all 4 sides of the barn shut. This past winter we didn't have any kind of heat source and not much insulation. I just ordered spray foam insulation to put in the barn and now we just have to wait for a nice day so we can take all the buns out and my brother can insulate it. Should keep the buns super cool in the summer and toasty warm in the winter ;).
First here are a few construction pictures of the framing and then the finished project!
As I said above, the main design of the barn is a pole barn design. We used 12 5”x5” posts for the poles – 3 per side. My barn is about 18’x19’x9’. Then we built the roof using 2”x6”’s. You can see the main design of the roof in the pictures above. We used a single sheet of sheet metal for the bottom 3’ of each wall. The roof is all sheet metal too. The top 6’ of the sides is covered with wire screen. We used a 1”x4” (you could use anything that was 1” – they are slightly an odd size since we got them from some private party out here) to help hold the wire screen in place – you can see it in the above pictures.
I’d never mess with canvas tarps to roll up & down again. They are a nightmare. So hard to keep down and draft free and then the 16 tarps I had bought brand new molded out within a year. They lasted a decent amount of time, but I didn’t want to spend $400+ every year for something that was a nightmare to open up & down.
So, for the wooden shutters, we used white sheet metal (to help reflect the heat/sun in the summer). My brother built a frame for the shutters out of 2”x4”’s. You can see what the frames look like in the pictures above. We put double bubble insulation (radiant barrier with what looks like bubble wrap in between two layers of the silver stuff) in between the wooden frame & the sheet metal. We had lots of extra double bubble, so that’s why we used it. We had originally put it in our house and then had to take it all down and put in a different kind of insulation. If you were going to use a different kind of insulation or didn’t care about the insulation, you could just use the black tar paper or I suppose nothing at all ;).
There are 4 shutters per side. The top 2 are about 2’ x half the size of the width of the barn. The bottom 2 are 4’ x half the size of the width of the barn. There are four 3 ½ inch hinges per shutter. The bottom shutters open down and the top ones open up.
My brother made a “latch” out of a piece of wood and a bolt to keep the shutters closed – two wooden latches per set of shutters. You can see them in the pics above.
We have a 1 ½” metal pulley attached to the eve of the barn (at the top) for each top shutter (a total of 8). Then we have a thick string/thin poly rope that is attached to the top shutters, goes through the pulley and then is long enough for me to pull and hook onto a nail that’s attached to a tree. That’s how the top shutters stay open. They are super easy to open & close that way. You can’t see it in the pics above, but my brother put a wooden handle on the end of the rope for the top shutters, so that it’s easy to pull open or closed. And he also made a loop in the rope above the handle to hook onto the nails/bolts in the trees. We have a lot of trees around my barn so that’s why we just put nails in them to hold the shutters open. We would’ve put a post or something in the ground to keep the top shutters open if we needed to though.
Now I just got spray foam insulation to insulate the barn. That was about $700 for enough to do my whole barn (about 500-600 sq ft counting all the side walls, etc).
Oh, also I used to have hog panels along the outside to keep predators from trying to break through the wire mesh. I don’t have those on there anymore because of the wooden shutters, but I’m going to be putting some livestock fencing on the inside part to help keep it more predator safe. I don’t leave the bottom shutters open at night at the moment because I don’t have the extra safety up with the fencing. Although I did leave it open a lot with just the wire screen the first year we built it, but I just don’t want an accident to happen – raccoon, dog or whatever. We don't have predators around where the barn is really, except for maybe a 'coon or possum, since our ranch dogs and fencing keep it pretty safe around here. But, I'd rather be extra safe than sorry :).