I’m adding 10’ overhangs to both sides of my existing barn and DH and I want to add exterior stall doors. I want to be able to open the top for airflow when the horses are being kept inside. But it’s an older barn, so I think sliders would be easier than fitting Dutch doors - less warping, etc. I’ve done some searching, but not finding many exterior stall doors with tops that can be open and closed that aren’t grills. Any manufacturers out there? Or examples for us to model? Any inputs on the project welcome!
Maybe it’s the make/style of my slider doors which open to the pens but it is awful when they have not been closed in awhile because birds make nests in the top of them. When that happens they don’t close all the way until I knock out the nest. If I were going to redo the barn it would be dutch doors to open to the pens.
I have dutch for my outside under overhang doors and they work quite well. The tops stay open during all but the coldest weather, keeping the barn nice and ventilated whether horses are in or out. I’ve had sliders before and didn’t care for them as outside stall doors.
We have sliders on ours - but I rarely use them. I have stall gates installed on the doorways as well so if I need to close a horse in, I can do so but they still have airflow. We also use those stall gates to close the horses out during the day (when they have access to the overhang and the paddocks). The slider doors work just fine, I just don’t need to close up the barn that completely except when it is empty. Which it hasn’t been since we built!
I think this may come down to what DH feels he can construct and install best:) Just super excited about the improvements! Thanks guys!
There’s never a perfect solution, but, if I had it to do over again, this is what I’d choose – sliders with stall gates.
I have two stalls with dutch doors that open into a paddock, and sliders on the interior stall doors that open into an aisle. I use stall gates on the barn interior, and the horses don’t mess with them, they hang straight, and look like they did the day I installed them. The dutch doors into the paddock have suffered. When I close the bottoms, the horses use the tops, which are latched open, as scratching tools and they’ve bent the hinges. When I leave one horse in for any reason, the loose ones come hang out by him and entertain him by rubbing their butts on his door, playing face-tag over the open door, and so on. So, both halves of my dutch doors have to be sort of lifted n’ dragged to open/close, and they look 100 years old instead of 2!
On the other hand, the horses look super cute sticking their heads out of them. So, there’s that 
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Sounds like the problem there is poorly hung doors, not which kind they are.
In general, sliding doors take more maintenance.
You can use screens with both kinds of doors, if screens is what is best there.
I have seen very few outside stall doors that are sliders, because, well, they take way more maintenance, are harder on the human that has to open them, poor ergonomics to them and are more apt to fail than hinged doors generally are.
The trade-off from hinged to sliders is that sliders don’t need as much room when opening, so they are best in narrow places, like tight aisles or where folding a hinged door would hit something, like columns, so they won’t fold all the way back when necessary.
Not knowing exactly what the OP has there, it is hard to say what would work best in that situation.
At least she will have now enough ideas to go by.
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