I’m looking for opinions on the Pros and Cons of different types of barn end doors, say, on a 12 foot aisle. When I imagine barn doors, I think double sliding doors that meet in the middle. But I have also seen a single sliding doors, and even pull out/push in doors. So here are my thoughts so far:
Double Sliding - aesthetically pleasing; less weight per door; allows for centered partial openings; more expensive?
Single Sliding - plain (even unattractive?); heavy; can open partially but won’t be centered; less expensive
Push/Pull - no tracks; pushing into aisleway is odd; cost unknown
So what other Pros and Cons are there to having these different types of doors? Is it even worth considering something other than the classic double sliding doors, especially if you are building a brand new barn?
We had two sliding doors, hated them, were hard on your shoulder blades, we were all sore from pulling to open and close them and they needed adjusting regularly.
Finally got smart enough to replace them with garage type doors, on a manual chain and a little kid can open and close them now and we don’t have to chisel snow and ice off them in the winter.
Win all around and since then, all our barn doors now are overhead doors.
You can buy them as fancy as you want, with windows of all kinds, in all colors and some that look like old style barn doors.
But aren’t your garage doors noisy? I hate the thought of them for two reasons: Percieved horse-scary noise when operating, and either all up or all down. I dont have any doors, in the South here. But during each winter I wish I had some wind screen instead of my pipe gates. I’ve thought of rigging a cover of plywood on the pipe gates to cut the wind or something, but usually only need that for less than a month, so I’ve done nothing.
Well hung sliding doors shouldn’t be hard to open. Poorly hung doors are an effing bear.
I’ve had both a single door and double doors and prefer the double. I’ve boarded at barns with garage doors and prefer sliders.
If you live somewhere cold, consider how to keep your doors from freezing to the ground (and/or make sure you have a few alternate ways in and out of the barn!) Not sure what the secret is, but certainly had that problem in Minnesota with the single door. Maybe it’s just the crazy winter there?
I have single sliding barn doors with no issue over 3 winters… and it’s cold here in Ontario! i personally chose them over swinging doors because I didn’t want to lose any aisle space for the door to swing into. Have been happy with my decision so far!
edited to add: we have overhangs that prevent accumulation of snow around the doors which may have contributed to our ease of use…
Roll up garage doors here too. With openers. Touch a button to open. Horses get used to them. Some of ours have to be told to wait until the door is high enough lol. We also have clickers to open as we approach to make exiting quicker.
Is this your own barn? BO put up a steel building with double sliders and they roll well. 14’ aisleway and I use the far end. I like that I can adjust them depending on the weather. She also knows they’ll be closed by the last person in the evening before they leave. She replaced one in the indoor because it got bashed up some over the years. There is an overhead door there now, which I wouldn’t want to deal with unless she put in clickers, which won’t happen.
I always hated the thought of the garage doors but the current barn has them and the horses spook the first time and then don’t care. The biggest pain is that they are harder to operate when holding two horses and they have to be open all the way. You can’t open them a little bit to squeeze in in the winter when you don’t want to let all the heat out.
The double doors are great when installed properly and I could open mine with my foot. However they tend to have a gap at the bottom that lets heat escape or a very cold breeze blow through in the winter.
The next barn I have will have two swinging doors that swing out and go to the ground.
Our aisle is 16’ wide and we have double sliding doors. No problems with opening them or closing them. Haven’t had to have them adjusted either. No problem with the them freezing to the ground, but we oriented the barn so it isn’t facing into the prevailing wind. We are in the Northeast. Personally, I wouldn’t go with a single sliding door (too heavy). Nor with I go with a garage door as a 16’x10’ opening when the temps are in the single digits lets too much heat out of the barn too quickly. Frozen pipes are a drag.
I have huge double sliding doors – tracks on top and bottom – wood frame construction with metal siding (pole barn style) Light as a feather to open/close. One door has a drop rod at the bottom that goes into a hole (buried pipe) for stability and has a U channel top to bottom that other door fits/slides into when closed. Works great – holds up to high winds. New construction – this is the type of door I chose.
We had sliding doors for decades, the wind would blow those on the West side of barns off, to where we had to bolt them shut permanently.
Ours were a good 14’-16’ tall and double, some 9’ wide each for a 18’ wide door.
We use those old doors for windbreaks on fences now.
We worked on them, changed rollers, they had a track on the bottom and extra braces on the ends, but they were just too much, too big, too heavy.
Maybe smaller sliding doors are ok, but where we have seen those in other barns, they just are not sliding very easily either.
Just went to a friend’s barn with sliding doors and they are not ergonomic, humans are not made to push and pull sideways, why you get sore under the shoulder blade if you have to do it all the time.
When those doors are half open, the winds here really are hard on them, why they need continuous repairs.
Overhead doors are not without fault, but for us, they were a big improvement, have replaces all sliders with them and are extremely happy with them, just as others are with their sliding doors.
I can see where, if you have to keep opening and closing a door all day long every few minutes, a smaller door of any kind would work better than a larger overhead or big sliding door.
In our old training barn, we had two swinging doors and generally left one closed all the time and walked thru the other one, but was a smaller opening, not a large barn door.
Also Ontario here. Both ends of our barn have double Dutch doors that swing in at the front of the barn and out at the rear of the barn. 12 foot aisle as well. Both have canopies over the doors to avoid the problem of snow buildup outside. Our barn is over 30 years old and still these doors work perfectly! [ATTACH=JSON]{“data-align”:“none”,“data-size”:“medium”,“data-attachmentid”:10002517}[/ATTACH]
I have installed sliding doors on Federal Reserve banks that weighed over 8,000 pounds each and those doors could be moved with a touch of two fingers… now stopping them was another story.
With proper track and truck assemblies a sliding door can be very easy to operate… and Simple to Automate… one powerhead can drive a bi-parting set of doors
As for snow/ice conditions… the best way is to mount the doors on the inside of the structure … doors can retract into pockets very similar to a household pocket door assembly… no big deal
Cost difference between a single slide and bi-parting is nominal as nearly the same amount of track is required for either… just need a second set of truck assemblies and minor hardware … either require the same amount of labor (the cost may be less for the bi-parting as the total weight of each door is half of a single door thus a lighter duty track and truck assembly might be usable)
If using overhead doors such as Bluey, if the doors are not too large there are quieter rollers that are not metallic. Biggest issue with overhead doors is in a barn or arena the doors are subjected to both positive and negative wind loads… if the doors do not have the proper bracing they can be easily blow out (or in) … the average plain Jane overhead door company will not think of the wind loading from both directions and will under price the door
We have wind struts in ours, our winds are fierce and also brush ends, to keep rain or snow from blowing in there on the sides.
I was thinking, if someone has to use those doors all day long, many times an hour, probably two sliding or swinging doors are better than rollup ones.
Then, most places don’t have that kind of traffic thru them and where they do, they end up leaving the door open while that much traffic is expected, which then would be comparable to overhead doors again.
I know that, for us, overhead door is way more practical, have lived with both, but may not be for others.
I have sliding doors, 12’ wide, on my aisles. I believe they are 14’ high. I unfortunately found that rain can blow quite a way down the aisle. For this reason I wish I had overhead doors so I could leave a few feet open for ventilation but keep most of the aisle dry. In one really bad storm the rain went nearly all the way down the 58’ aisle. I bet overhangs like in the photo from cherham would help a lot too. I’ve thought about looking into the vinyl strip doors to see if they would keep the rain out.
On double sliding doors, I have them at the end of my indoor arena. They have this funky clip to hold them together that does not stay in place at all. I wonder if other companies have different latches but I hate mine. Thinking of trying to install the same latch on each door that my single doors have, the latch goes into a hole on the door and snugs the door to the barn.
I have double sliders for a 12x12ft opening. Very easy to open/close because, as mentioned above, they’re hung properly. I also get up on a ladder every couple of years and squirt some white grease into the track.
Only complaint I have is that their wind resistance is relatively poor, on days when they’re closed and the wind is from the south. Which, is very seldom in winter, when the doors are most likely to be closed. But anyway on those days, it’s not enough to just latch them together-- you can see the wind really pushing the bottoms of the doors inward. At least with single sliding door, both sides are supported by the door frame.
For a long time I dreamed up some permanent brace that would keep them from blowing inward-- but yet, not be an obstruction that prevents driving into the barn. I think some form of receiver tube that’s sunk into the aisle would work-- so you could just insert a bollard type post that supports the doors on a windy night, and pull it out / set it aside when not needed. But then I picture how much crud would accumulate in that receiver tube, and give up the idea.
So, years later, I’m still using the “temporary” solution of a cinderblock that I place on the ground where the doors meet, and then hide it in a corner when it’s not in use. Works well enough, and the need is seldom enough. But I do wish I had something more elegant…
Our old sliding doors were running on an angle iron piece stuck on the bottom where they looked like a triangular shape, to keep them running straigth and not blowing in with the wind.
The sliding doors had a smaller angle iron piece welded on them that matched that one on the bottom, that formed a kind of track for the door.
You did have to drive and lead horses over that, but was only about 1" or 1 1/2" tall.
On both ends there was a piece of metal stuck there to keep the big sliding doors more steady on that angle iron track.
Our winds were way too hard on those kinds of doors.
Most everyone around here uses overhead doors today in the larger openings.
No matter what kind you use, there will be good points and things you have to manage around what you have.
I like that angle iron idea but for me there’s too big a gap between ground and the doors when they’re closed (necessary to accommodate some level issues in the path of the door travel-- rehabbing a 120y/o barn means living with some quirks.) But those drop pins would be useful, thanks for the idea!
