Interior stall doors - sliding, swinging?

[tpup]

Building barn in the spring. My current barn where I board has swinging doors, “torso size”. They are like swinging gates but open at the bottom (large dog could fit under easily). Open at top, at top of chest height for larger horse so horses can hang head out which I do like. Horses have never challenged that and it’s never been a problem. No issues with their heads hanging out as it’s a small private barn - I am the only boarder. But, shavings do fly into the aisle with the wind as the bottoms are open. Pluses - easy open/close, never get stuck. Airy. Also handy to slide food pans in/out, and sweep shavings back in under the door.

One set up my old boarding barn had was the classic sliding door with the iron rungs at the top (solid, no yolk but see through of course). BUT…they also had the swinging gate attached to side wall so that you could use either/or. It was clipped to wall in the “open” position when not in use. Best of both worlds when you needed one vs. the other.

I’ll be visiting a friend’s barn that has “Lucas” stalls and she raves about them. We have the chance to do it the way we want as we are building from scratch. The standard offered by our barn builder is a nice heavy slider with the “jail” bars across the top half. Very solid but IMO the bars are just a tad too far apart. If we have a smaller pony I worry about a muzzle getting stuck. I’d also like an airier option for summer.

Would love your opinions and to see pics. I saw some neat doors in the “fan outlet” thread.

[Bluey]

Basically, sliding doors are better if you have a narrow aisle or much traffic down the aisle, so you don’t interfere with that by swinging a door into it to get a horse in our out.

Having been in barns with both, sliding doors are harder to keep sliding, they tend to need maintenance regularly and with several doors, more than some want to keep working on them.
Swinging doors don’t need maintenance, but you need the aisle to be clear for them to swing.

I have to twist and strain ever so slightly to open any kind of sliding door, especially if they are not sliding perfectly smooth, as most tend to do.
They are awkward to me and over a day of using sliding doors, my back under my shoulder blade hurts.
I prefer swinging doors any day, more ergonomically kind to human bodies, I think.

We have always made our own stalls of all kinds with swinging doors, but I think it is more of a preference than any one being that much better than another.

[islgrl]

I prefer sliding doors. I think the swinging ones take up too much room in the aisle.

[tpup]

Thanks everyone! The swinging ones in one of my prior barns swing into the stall. Again, it was only a “torso” door - on me, shoulder height to knee height and it was barred/see thru. In that barn, it swing in toward the wall and could clip there, and there were also sliding doors that were kept open if the swinging door was in use. My concern with sliding is the maintenance. But even our vet clinic has sliding ones. So it had me thinking.

[morganpony86]

IMO, it entirely depends on the barn situation. As the others have said, sliding would be the go-to for a busy barn. However, I have swinging in my barn (just three horses and myself) and I love them. Sliding doors do get stuck a lot. My swinging doors go from floor to neck (not the chest ones you’re talking about) and are solid wood. Cheap, easy, horses can still hang their heads out over, and cuts down on things getting out of (e.g. shavings) or into (e.g. critters) the stalls.

[JB]

Mine swing in, but they too are only “torso” doors. This means if a horse is down, it’s not going to have a problem opening. That’s the reason you don’t really want a door that goes to the floor to swing in, unless you also have an exterior door.

[Jim_in_PA]

One of my horses has a slider; the other has a swinging (full) door. I personally prefer the slider because it doesn’t stick out in the isle, but both are very functional. I wouldn’t want a door that doesn’t go all the way down and contain shavings/hay in the stall, however.

[tpup]

Thanks JB - never even thought about the “what if’s” regarding a horse going down.

[SuckerForHorses]

Sliders.

If you want the option for the horse to be able to hang it’s head out, I will slide mine open, and then hang up two stall chains (I have one that will duck under if there is just one chain )

[FairWeather]

Depends entirely on preference I have swinging doors because I wanted Euro-front style stalls so I had a very open/non jail-like barn.
I did consider the sliders with the open tops, but I didn’t want beams across the tops of the stalls. Vanity, for me

[King_s_Ransom]

I had both, and got rid of my expensive, custom made slider. It did feel like a jail, and I had the bars to the top (what was I thinking? Like I was trying to keep a wild stallion in there or something?)

I now have swing out gates with mesh fill at every stall and I love them. Makes the barn feel more open and friendly. Where I could, I put in oversized openings, having had a horse get cast and needing to get in quick. I really love the new set up.

A couple of drawbacks that don’t bother me but might someone else:

1. Yes, you do have to sweep the bedding back into the stall.
2. Yes, the gates do swing out to the aisle, and you have to be aware of that.

No problem for me, I want the gates to swing out, again because of my experience with cast horse. I have to sweep the aisle anyway … Plus, I had bedding get stuck in the slider’s path before, so that was a bigger pain than a couple of swishes with the broom.

Mostly, I like how the barn seems so much brighter and more friendly now.

Note: private barn, four well behaved geldings who are basically family members. No fighters, biters or troublemakers.

[HungarianHippo]

If you are going with swinging, a general rule is that any “egress” door should swing out, in the direction of escape. Let’s say you’re in a stall with a horse that’s bouncing off the walls, it’s quicker and safer to open the door by pushing it away from you, vs. forcing the horse to back off and make room while you open the stall door inwards.
We are putting the typical sliders in–solid bottom, grill on top. My experience is that half-doors are very nice and social etc when all the horses are calm. But I’d rather a full-height barrier for situations when I need to confine a horse to a stall when he doesn’t particularly want to be there. When my guy was on extended stall rest there were moments where he almost busted down the half-door.

[Calvincrowe]

I have had sliding Priefert stall doors in my 3 stall home barn for 10 years–absolutely NO issues with them. They have wood on the bottom half, bars on top with a fold back “head hole” portion, that is always open so horse heads can hang out into my aisle (but I have the option of closing it when needed–when Giant Warmblood is bored and flings his halter/blankets etc.). I have boarded in every iteration of door imaginable and far and away prefer a sliding door. Swinging ones either block the aisle or the stall, catch horses hips and human bodies. I"ve seen too many injuries caused by swinging doors to ever have them. That said, my exterior stall doors are heavy wood custom made Dutch doors that swing out and can lock back against the barn (under the overhang). I like them for that purpose and there’s lots of room out there to fling them open to let out/bring in horses.

Half (torso) doors that lock back against the wall? Hmm…interesting in combination with a slider. If you choose a sliding door, make sure the hardware and the stall boards/beams/posts you attach them to are VERY sturdy. That seems to be the “weak link” in many barns, and leads to failures. Also, sliding doors must be at ground level, with no room for wee hooves to come out under them.

[Bluey]

I have seen more accidents with sliders and an anxious horse running in or out of the stall before the door was opened all the way.
That doesn’t happen with a swing door opening out, the door just swings wider.

I think that either works fine, there are advantages and disadvantages to both and accidents are just as apt to happen with either when things don’t go right.

I will say, many pictures of horse stalls on the internet and in web pages of those building barns have sliding doors today.
I never saw a sliding door in a stall until I came to the USA, there were none or very rare in Europe years ago.

I think whatever anyone wants, it will be fine.

I would question opening a swinging door into the stall, with that being the only door.
I would not think that is safe if a horse is down in there and you can’t open the door then.

I like this setup, shavings guard, so you don’t have to sweep so many shavings off the aisle, horses can see each other even several stalls away, airflow is good.
Disadvantages could be, if a horse gets nervous in there, it can easily jump out and if it wants to “reach and touch someone” walking by, horse or human, it sure can, so you would have to use those kinds of open stalls where there is not much traffic and with sedate horses managed so they don’t fret.

[JB]

[QUOTE=Bluey;7301146]

I would question opening a swinging door into the stall, with that being the only door.
I would not think that is safe if a horse is down in there and you can’t open the door then.[/QUOTE]
But as has been said, if the door is a partial “torso” door, it’s high enough at the bottom to clear any horse who is down. I agree a full door, if it’s the only door, should not swing in.

All options have pros and cons. I don’t need to worry about shavings escaping because I rarely keep horses in. As well, because of how my barn was built, my concrete aisle is taller than the matted stalls. Yes, if horses were in for 12+ hours a day, every day, and I had ample shavings in there all that time, there’d be a lot more in the way of sweeping I’d have to do. As it is now, when they do come in for the night or day on the odd occasion, I sweep shavings back from the door a bit, and that minimizes escapes as well.

[horsepoor]

My interior stall doors are sliders with drop down tops. Like these - the top half of stall door is hinged so you can leave open. (I don’t have the feeders shown here, but just barred doors that you can open for feeding, as my hay goes on ground). I like them well enough but find the tops kind of low for our larger sporthorses - I think they fit small western types better as I worry about mine whacking their heads on them (especially the tall guy with giraffe neck). But there are many brands and configurations out there to choose from with better specs.

My outside doors were full sliders built when we put up the barn but I never used them as I hated closing the horses in like that (no windows, just heavy wood doors). So I took them down and now have these gates in brown to match the barn. They open inward since you need to have them braced against the wall when closed so horse can’t push out, but if a horse was down, they’d be high enough to swing in anyway. They work really well, and my vet from the racetrack suggested these as he’s seen horses get caught on the common metal types (jawbreakers, as he calls them).

I’m not crazy about swinging doors in boarding barns as I’ve seen more horses get caught on them, but also seen lots of injuries from latches sticking out on some sliders…most all of that due to careless barn staff. Not an issue at home since my only “staff” is my partner who has been well trained now!:winkgrin:

[tangledweb]

I really like the look of sliding doors, and I find them very usable when horses are being well behaved.

… however I used to keep my horses at a barn that opened sliding doors and let horses run out to turnout …

I once saw a horse barrel through a sliding door, tear it off its top track and panic because it is now wearing a 100+ lb 2" thick oak and steel door like a necklace. (solid bottom half open window in top half)

At the same barn one of my horses tried the same trick, but the hardware at the top held, so she flipped the 100+ lb door up like a cat flap while running under it.

Badly designed swing doors can have sharp latches one one side or the other, but I’ve never seen anything go quite so spectacularly wrong with a swing door.

[winter]

I have worked with both and have both in my barn right now. I vastly prefer swinging doors. The caveat to that is that you need a wide enough alley if you are a busy barn.
My preference for swinging is because:
-less strain on me to open/close
-longevity (sliding doors seem to deteriorate in function much more quickly)
-sliding doors sometimes do not open all the way resulting in bashed hips for horses
-a panicked horse can try to go out through a partially opened slider and seriously hurt themselves
-a horse that kicks his door can quickly damage his sliding door and has the posibility of getting a foot stuck in between the door and the frame
-I dislike having a bar over the entrance to the stall; when they have open tops I have seen horses hit their heads when pulling back into their stalls.

[cowboymom]

This thread begs the questions “why are we putting horses in stalls?” LOL A million and one ways a horse can hurt himself on a stall front…

I’ve seen a loose horse run down a (concrete) aisle of open swinging doors and caused mass chaos, doors slamming and swinging and the horse bouncing off the ends of the doors, OMG it was a mess. And it was at a vet clinic so the horse was already there for a lameness. I liked the swinging doors for having to get in and out of the stalls quickly and easily. The barn we have now has all sliding doors and I’m incubating a severe hatred of them.

[Houndhill]

One thing that makes a big difference with sliding doors is the quality of the track. We had originally installed sliding doors that became very difficult to open and close. Replaced the overhead tracks with some Amish made ones that a friend had, that you can open with one finger pressure! It made such a difference!

I really like them, they weigh a ton, are oak/pine on the bottom and iron bars above, very secure. When I am in the barn, I open them and put up stall chains, all our horses respect those. But when we have had guest horses, and whenever we are not there to supervise, the doors are very secure, easy to operate, and take no space in the aisle.

The torso doors would not work for me as I sometimes take dogs to the barn that I would not want going into stalls. Otherwise they sound great.