We have a 36 x 24 shed row barn with 2 stalls and a combo tack/feed room and a 12 ft. aisle. The aisle and the tack/feed room are concrete, and the stalls and exterior barn walls are concrete perimeter beams (so not a pole barn). I have boarded at both center aisle and shed row barns with dirt aisles and didn’t want that in our own barn.
As far as cost savings, our barn is modular. At the time we bought, which is a considerable while ago, we could have had the same amount of roof covering a 36 x 24 center aisle barn, with 2 stalls along one side and the other side used either for a combo tack/feed room and either open storage or a wash stall, or separate tack and feed rooms. This design would have also had the same amount of concrete flooring. However, we hadn’t cared for the many center-aisle barns we had boarded in over the years while really enjoying the airy, breezy shed row ones, so we went with the shed row design even though there were no savings on roof area or concrete in our case. In our climate, having copious ventilation is a prime consideration.
We put in a wash rack in the aisle at the end, in front of the tack/feed room with a slightly pitched concrete floor and grooves cut in the concrete to help channel the water, but quickly decided that we much preferred having a wash area just a few steps away, under an adjacent large tree, where we put in gravel topped with interlocking mats. It’s shady and breezy, a very pleasant place to work in our climate the few times per year we wash the horses (usually only before clipping), and still very close to the hot and cold water taps near the wash rack. When we hose our hoses off, after exercise on hot days, for instance, we do so underneath one tree or another so that the run-off water serves the purpose of irrigating the trees. For just a couple of horses, in a hot climate, this works for us.
We groom underneath the 12 ft. wide overhang over the concrete aisle, in front of the stalls; after several years, we installed thin rubber matting from TSC over the most-used area. Here, we have the benefit of shade and protection from precipitation, but still enjoy the breezes. Our barn is oriented so that the stalls and aisles (the 36 ft. length) are perpendicular to the summer’s southeasterly breeze, while the long backside of the barn faces the winter’s relatively harsh northwestern storms (the direction from which severe weather and hail is most likely in our area).
It’s no problem to get feed into the tack/feed room, as we also only purchase 3 to 4 bags of feed at a time, and generally no more than a half-dozen or so bags of pelleted bedding (the latter is kept in a deck box at one end of the barn aisle, near the wash rack stanchion). I can drive up to the barn, parallel and right next to the aisle and across from the tack/feed room door, and have only to tote the bags across the width of the aisle, which is no biggie. We store our hay in a dedicated hay shed adjacent to the barn, where we fill the slow feed hay nets each morning and carry them the very short distance to the barn. We want neither the mess nor what we consider to be the added fire risk from keeping larger quantities in the barn itself.
I’m quite happy with the 12 ft. aisle width with our small horses, as there is plenty of room to work around them when they are tied in the aisle, whether for grooming, farrier work, or rolling a manure cart or whatever behind them, plus it allows room for the deck box of bedding at one end of the aisle and a cushioned bench at the other. I don’t think an 8 ft. aisle would be as useful for my purposes. However, if all of your grooming and, I assume, farrier and perhaps vet work, would be in a larger, dedicated space, then perhaps a relatively narrow aisle would work for you.
Anyone have experience with this company? I’d probably have someone else build it on site instead and just use this blueprint, unless others have rave reviews about them.
The horses are only groomed occasionally and it’s plenty roomy for that.