"cool curtains" keeps sun and bugs out of your barn???

[blueribbonpanel]

I have always been curious about these “cool curtains”. I saw them advertised at State Line recently. Has anyone used them and do you like them.

I am wondering too if its windy if they just blow up and therefore wouldn’t help with the sun and bugs. We have a lot of wind at our farm.

[Heart_s_Journey]

I’ve hung screening in the openings and windows of wherever I have boarded for years. It serves a couple purposes: blocks the sun, so it’s not as hot, flies don’t like dark areas and it tends to keep them out of the stall.

I buy it at Home Depot or Lowes. The darker the screen, the more expensive. I cut it to size and use a staple gun to keep it in place.

Your horse might be scared at first, but they learn very quickly to go in and out by pushing it out of the way.

[goodhors]

The fabric may go under different names, Shade Cloth, mesh, when you hunt for it. Farm-Tec offers quite a variety of the mesh type fabrics, made up in sizes for immediate uses.

I purchased a “mesh tarp” recently from Harbor Freight, to try using as a shade cloth over one end of the barn where I park the tractor. The orange is fading with hard sunshine on it every day, so I thought I would try the inexpensive mesh tarp there, to keep sun off the tractor. It is a rather fine mesh, so I am not sure if breezes will get thru for fresh air or not. It is fairly solid, so I hope the mesh fabric will stay down in breezes going thru the barn, not get to flapping in the wind of a storm.

I would go with shade cloth for horse barns, stalls, where you want air movement. They come in a bigger mesh than my tarp has, still cast a good shade, for keeping the animals cooled off. I got to see this in action at our Fair, when shade cloth got tacked up over the cow shed open sides, across the windows of the sheep barn, yet still let in a good air movement for cooling, while keeping things darker inside.

Check out the Farm-Tec site, they have a big variety of selections, finished and unfinished sizes of shade cloth available. Harbor Freight also has these mesh tarps, pretty inexpensive for a plastic type mesh. Not the same stuff as the shade cloth fabrics. But their tarps are all finished, have grommet holes already in them, various sizes, so could be a cheap fabric to try. Just not sure the moving breezes would get thru as easily with tighter mesh design, than shade cloth options.

[beowulf]

[QUOTE=blueribbonpanel;8616186]
I have always been curious about these “cool curtains”. I saw them advertised at State Line recently. Has anyone used them and do you like them.

I am wondering too if its windy if they just blow up and therefore wouldn’t help with the sun and bugs. We have a lot of wind at our farm.[/QUOTE]

i won a long panel of one last year at an equine related banquet - i had no use for it, so gave it to my mother. it’s quite heavy and it is very durable. she reportedly loves it - she uses it in her old run in (made for horses, repurposed now for chickens) to keep the snow and wind out in the winter. it does provide some shade. it is dense, and it would have to be a pretty strong gust of wind to send it flapping. IIRC, each square has eyelets, and she fastened them down to help ease the snowdrift/winter squalls that can be quite powerful up here in the NE.

[Bluey]

You may enjoy this thread:

http://www.chronofhorse.com/forum/showthread.php?488814-Fly-proofing-the-barn

We have the single plastic strips, that have been beaten down in our incessant winds and the fly screens, that are holding up much better.

If you have a lot of wind, you can get the screens in the smaller, say 4’ widths and hang several in each opening, rather than one whole long screen.

There are different kinds of screens and those can be 50%, 70% or 90% wind and sun screen, we like for horse facilities the 70% best.

[Doctracy]

I haven’t tried them on barns but used a lot of shade cloth from Harbor Freight ( not tarps) for my gardens in AZ. They were sturdy material,never put damaged by Haboobs or monsoon storms even if the structure sometimes came down. I used them year after year for the tomatoes and they kept them going an extra month or two into summer.

[goodhors]

[QUOTE=Doctracy;8616667]
I haven’t tried them on barns but used a lot of shade cloth from Harbor Freight ( not tarps) for my gardens in AZ. They were sturdy material,never put damaged by Haboobs or monsoon storms even if the structure sometimes came down. I used them year after year for the tomatoes and they kept them going an extra month or two into summer.[/QUOTE]

Does the shade cloth at Harbor Freight have a trick name? I could not find anything searching for shade cloth. Just those mesh tarps.

[tulachard]

[QUOTE=goodhors;8618852]
Does the shade cloth at Harbor Freight have a trick name? I could not find anything searching for shade cloth. Just those mesh tarps.[/QUOTE]

That’s what you want. I’ve used mine for 4 years now and the only issue I have is that the wind will sometimes grab the tarp and it rips the fabric around the grommets. But that’s an easy fix, or buy a new one using a 20% off coupon.