My friend’s barn is a modified bank barn. It’s actually what I would call 2 1/2 levels. The " bank" portion is an open run in that stays very cool in summer and well protected in winter. Above the run in is the stable. The stalls and aisle way are on the main floor while the hay/tack is located a 1/2 floor up and runs along the north side of the barn, helping insulate from northern wind. One row of stalls has access to private turn out while the other row butts up against the hay loft/tack area.
I boarded in a SINGLE STORY bank barn in the past. I really liked it.
It was a 6-stall center aisle barn built into the side of a hill.
The reason it was built as a bank barn was due to the terrain - to make best use of the sloping site.
Cool in the summer, nice in winter.
It is no doubt a more expensive building method.
One row of stalls was along the “earth” side, then a center aisle, then another row of stalls that was on the “outside.” Both sides had windows into the stalls, but the side built into the ground had slightly smaller windows.
I wish I had a photo to post, sorry. It was definitely unique.
[QUOTE=WildBlue;6133597]
Bluey has a really good point. If you’re not going to have an ‘upstairs’ portion to access via the bank, building a partially-buried barn might not give you much bang for your buck. [/QUOTE]
Agreed. The bank barn I grew up with in New England was a 3-story barn. The basement was 100% built inside the hill. The horses lived upstairs on the main floor with a hay loft above that. Best barn design EVER, in the snowy North - there was a trapdoor in the main floor so you could dump the manure down into a truck bed (or nowadays a manure spreader) and not have to hassle w/ wheelbarrows until the snow melted. But I can’t see keeping the horses on the ground floor at all - too damp.
That said, now that I live in tornado country, there would be a LOT to be said for building emergency stalls down there.
[QUOTE=War Admiral;6137012]
Agreed. The bank barn I grew up with in New England was a 3-story barn. The basement was 100% built inside the hill. The horses lived upstairs on the main floor with a hay loft above that. Best barn design EVER, in the snowy North - there was a trapdoor in the main floor so you could dump the manure down into a truck bed (or nowadays a manure spreader) and not have to hassle w/ wheelbarrows until the snow melted. But I can’t see keeping the horses on the ground floor at all - too damp.
That said, now that I live in tornado country, there would be a LOT to be said for building emergency stalls down there.[/QUOTE]
We live in tornado country and I know of one barn that is a shedrow barn built into the wall of a canyon.
The stalls are in the back, the aisle in front and framed with nice SW stucco arches, like you see circling the plazas of NM towns.
I think the horses in there would never notice if the wind is blowing hard or we had big hail or a tornado outbreak.
On the other hand, I would say it may be very labor intensive to clean and move horses, without any other way than by hand.
While warm in the winter, our 100+ summer days may not be so pleasant in there, without any air moving thru.
You can’t drive a spreader thru there to clean, have to handwalk the horses to turnout and back. etc.
I am not sure they use those stables any more, but they sure are pretty to see just driving by.
That’s why I said “emergency” stalls. I’d still have the horses on the 2nd floor as in days of yore, but it’d be nice to know you could stash them someplace safe, or at least safe-ish, in the event of an emergency! During the last round of tornadoes here, my then-trainer brought horses into the basement of the HOUSE!
If you are set on building one, and the ground continues to slope downhill from it, I can tell you how to waterproof the underground part so it absolutely will never have any water infiltration, or a damp floor.
I restore historic houses for a living, and have a system for waterproofing the old basements that stays drier than any new basement. It’s not cheap though. A 1780 house we did last summer, that had standing water under it for probably decades, is now absolutely dry. Cost was about 18,000, but I’m sure it was a lot bigger than any bank barn you would build.
I can outline the system if you want to do it, but I don’t want to type out a long post, just to have it dumped later on, if it’s not necessary.
Oh Please Do Tom! I’d love to read it, and it might help me in a building project we are contemplating. I’d love to pick your brain, and perhaps others feel the same way. 
How do I upgrade so I can post pictures. It’s been years since I remembered to do it.
You can upgrade to premium member, I think it is $20 a year.
I did that, but can’t really post pictures as they just don’t seem to be in the right format or too large for the site’s programs.
That money goes to keep this site running and that is a worthy goal, I think.
I have an account in photobucket with an album that I copy the URL of any picture I want to post and post that link here and anyone that clicks on that can see the picture off photobucket.
I think there are many that would love to read how you waterproof soils and retaining walls.
I found it. Go to User CP, and it’s under “paid subscriptions”.
I’m going to upgrade now. I hope this is the newer version of vBulletin where you don’t have to downsize pictures to post. It’s a breeze on my other forums now that I don’t have to downsize pictures
I’ll start by telling how we do it on 18th century basements.
They built 18th century basements by first digging the hole-around here about 4 feet deep. Inside that hole a layer of stone was run up to ground level, and above that, the stone foundation became two layers thick up to the sill of the building, with the outer layer just built on top of the ground and rubble fill behind the underground stone. This meant that the dirt under the outer layer of stone (the part of the foundation you see from the outside) cannot be disturbed.
In the 1780 house that I will show pictures of, the whole interior layer of stone has collasped, and the house is just left standing on top of the outer layer of stone. On other jobs, we excavate close to the outer foundation wall. If we had done that on the Dromgoole house (1780 one) there would have been great risk of the whole thing collapsing.
We want to start on the highest side of the building (opposite from the side we will drain to), and dig down to a low starting point 1 1/2 foot below the basement floor. On the Dromgoole house, since we needed to leave the dirt to support the building, we wanted to leave it at a 45 degree slope down away from the foundation to the bottom of the excavation.
The bottom of the excavation will slope down around the building 1 inch every 10 feet, and drain out to daylight down the hill.
I figured out how far out from the house this 45 degree slope would be to the bottom of the excavation. To establish this grade, I rented a mini-excavator and dug the grade establishing ditch. At the Dromgoole house, the grade establishing ditch started at 5 1/2’ deep, 5 1/2 feet out from the foundation, and ran around the house about 100’ on each side, sloping down 1 inch every 10 feet.
We will hire a big excavator to dig out the dirt leaving the 45 degree slope using the grade establishing ditch as a guide. I figure if I left it to the excavator operator, it would have been much more difficult to get a good grade.
The excavator operator walked his tracks parallel to the grade ditch, on the outside, and dug at a right angle. he started near the foundation, and dug down at the angle. We welded an old bucket edge across the teeth of the excavator, so he could clean the dirt out good. It all worked like a charm.
As soon as he got finished on one side of the house, we started with our waterproofing system on top of the 45 degree slope.
The first layer of the waterproofing system is Cetco Voltex DS. It’s two layers of geotextile cloth sewn together with bentonite in the inside, and a thin waterproof membrane on the outside. It’s pretty heavy stuff, but comes in rolls that weigh maybe 65 lbs a piece. I held it in place with landscape fabric staples.
We are going to put big washed, crushed granite on top of the waterproofing membrane to let surface water drain to the bottom of our ditch where it will be carried away in perforated pipe out to daylight downhill. Around here, this crushed granite is either called #2 or #3 stone, depending on the quarry. It’s commonly called “railroad ballast”. Washed, round, big river rock would have been better, but that’s not cheaply available around here.
To protect the Voltex DS from the sharp points of the railroad ballast, we put a layer of 60 mil Firestone pond liner directly on top the Voltex. It’s like really heavy, tough synthetic inner tube material.
We used #88 stone (small and easy to screed with a 2x4) to establish a perfectly straight grade at the bottom of the ditch.
On top of the 88 stone, we put a layer of geotextile cloth up under the waterproofing membranes, across the bottom of the ditch and up the out side. The perforated PVC drain pipe was glued together and placed in the bottom of the excavation. The geotex will keep the tiny 88 stone out of the holes in the drain pipe. #3 stone is almost impossible to grade by hand. 88 stone is very easy.
Next step put the #3 stone in on top of the pipe, and up the slope on top fo the waterproofing membrane, at least a foot deep.
We got the stone up the slope as far as the loader could reach, and then wrapped the geotextile cloth, that had been folded over the outter wall of the excavation, back over the #3 stone, to keep the dirt out of it, and started to backfill with dirt. Once the loader had enough dirt to put the front of his tracks on, he continues putting the #3 stone up the slope to the top. The geotex was folded over the rest of the way, and the backfilling completed.
Once we got past the house, a ditch was dug from the low side of the excavation, dowhill sloping out above ground. On this hill this ditch was about 300 feet long. In this ditch, we connected solid PVC drain pipe to the perforated pipe, and the ditch was backfilled with dirt.
My Premium membership hasn’t gone through yet, but I will come back and post pictures when it does.
On other old houses I’ve done, and any bank barns already in existence, the excavation can be done at a steeper angle than the 45 we used on the Dromgoole house, but you still leave a layer of dirt, and waterproof that.
In one 1828 house I did a few years ago, we left sample pieces of wood laying on bare dirt on the floor. 2 years later, the wood left on the dirt floor has 2 percent less moisture in it than the other end of the same board left under a shed roof stored above ground. There is no heat in the house yet, but it is closed up.
We did the Dromgoole house last June. It had standing water under it for decades-the reason the interior stone walls had fallen down. Now you can kick dust on top of the brick floor, and without treatment, termites have left the building(that had completey eaten a main support beam causing the floor in two rooms to collaspe (nothing we can’t fix-have already hewn the replacements). I did find some termites this weekend with a stethoscope in an outside sill next to a chimney that the shoulder is leaking into the wall above-nothing else has been done on this project since we waterproofed the basement-waiting on fund raising.
That might sound complicated, but pictures should clarify it.
It wouldn’t have been so bad on the Dromgoole house, but the whole place had been overrun by a Wisteria jungle, and we had to clear several acres of land to have room to work and try to start the fight against the Wisteria.
Total cost for materials, and three weeks work, including the clearing, was about $25,000. Heavy equipment was there for 9 days, but only a couple on the waterproofing system. The bentonite should make it permanently watertite. The clearing was a good part of the cost, so I’m guessing the waterproofing system was about 15,000. This didn’t include my fee and labor, but that’s the part you can look after and do yourself if you can.
After the foundation work is all finished, or on a foundation that is already finished, we flash the top of the Voltex DS with Bituthene. It’s an adhesive backed waterproofing membrane. I’ll buy a couple of cheap 4 1/2" side grinders in Walmart, and a couple of diamond, masonry blades for it in Home Depot. With these, we’ll cut a slot right above ground level into the stone and mortar all the way around the building at a sloping out and down angle about an inch deep. One guy runs a water hose on the blade to keep it cool and cut down all the dust. Operator wears thick rubber gloves as another layer of protection from the electricity and water. This cuts fairly quickly, but the cheap grinders will have worn out bearings after about 100’ each. I’d rather wear out a couple of 30 buck grinders, than put a good one to this job.
We’ll cut pieces of the Bituthene about 6 inches wide and 8 inches long, peel the backing off, and put it into the cleaned and dried slot in the foundation, and seal it down to the Voltex. Small pieces like this are about as big as you can handle to keep the Bituthene from sticking to itself or somewhere you don’t want it. This is the final bit of protection that sheds any water that hits the outside of the foundation, down to the bottom of the drain, and out to daylight downhill.
A wheelbarrow of water poured against the foundation on the high side where we started, will run out the the drain pipe that comes out downhill less than a minute later. It’s been pretty impressive to anyone that sees it.
It’s just a very elaborate French drain system with waterproofing.
I do everything there is to do with restoring old houses. Some people say the goal it to restore them so the average person can’t tell the difference. I can restore them so the people who built them couldn’t tell the difference.
http://www.cetco.com/CN/TDS/Voltex%20DS%20CIP%20TechData.pdf
http://www.metrowaterproofing.com/documents/BIT3000.PDF
http://www.thepondwarehouse.com/pond/firestone-pond-gard-epdm-60-mil-pond-liner-217-1.html
Is there still enough interest, and will this do anyone any good, for me to post pictures?
Still waiting for the upgrade to premium to go through, so I can post pictures, if anyone still wants to see them.
Yes, please!
Out of sheer curiosity, mind you, no pressing need, so no need to hurry on my part.
I would love to see it Tom, thanks for posting and upgrading.
payment went through for Premium on the 12th. I’ll check back every once in a while. I guess someone will see it sometime. It must not be automatic.
Anyone know if I need to do anything once the fee has been paid to upgrade to premium?
[QUOTE=Tom King;6147146]
Anyone know if I need to do anything once the fee has been paid to upgrade to premium?[/QUOTE]
How about PM a moderator?
On the bottom of the Off Course forum page, there is a list of poster’s names as links and the Moderator’s also.
“Bank barns are commonly linked to Germanic culture, an English tradition needs to be considered as well.” From a great book called “Barns”.
We have one, the original section dates to late 1690’s with an opposing gabled section added latter along with a stoned posted “forebay”. The barn was converted to 20 stalls, the forebay was enclosed and has lots of windows. The property is a William Penn land grant,1681.
Yes, some can be “dark and dank” but from my experience that is more the exception then the rule. Ours is quite big (70 ft wide open on both ends) It’s a given that the stalls in the middle on the bank side are dark. But a couple of 150 watt compact florescent light bulbs in the stalls take care of that. Ours is a true bank barn and water has never been an issue. But I have been in some that it is. It has wonderful ventilation. Most people, but not all, that built these along with houses back in the day had a pretty good understanding of how things worked and took great effort in “sighting” their building carefully. After all it took a tremendous effort to build these structures with limited resources. In other words they wanted to get it right the first time. The primary reason bank barns were built was due to limited resources. Stone was far more plentiful then “dimensional” lumber. Be it by hand or bought at great expense from a mill if there was one. But the labor involved in cutting into a bank, gathering the stones and building a thick retaining wall all by hand is just mind boggling. But the materials were free.
Yes, I believe they took into consideration the insulation factor as a plus but the barns had to be very large, not as much for the live stock but more to store grain and enough hay to get through the winter and early spring. Considering the volume that a 50lb bale of uncompressed hay has the barn had to be big. So, as live stock became a more important part in the agrarian community especially cattle a lot of thought was given to efficient use of space. 2 stories took care of the efficient part but getting the grain and hay wagons, etc. into the second story would prove problematic. Building a reasonably graded ramp would take a lot of scarce and expensive lumber. Building a dirt ramp would require digging quite a large hole to get the material. And transporting it to the site, shovel it off the wagon and compact it. IMO the decision would have been easy if your property had the topography. And most did. Sorry for the history lesson to those who know these about things. Hopefully there are some that did not. I love big old barns they just amaze me.
Their size and scope is fascinating. Being a person that knows what it takes to build things, with modern tools and equipment, the amount of work, manual labor that went into these structures is mind-boggling.
Anyway back to the original question. As others have pointed out and the reason for the long but hopefully educational verbiage above if you are not going to incorporate a second story for drive in storage above then why bother with the extra labor cost. If you are trying to utilize passive solar design for insulation I think you would getter a better bang for the buck by just building on grade and insulating that wall. How ever IMO if the only building site is on a slope then it make sense. What you take from the cut in can be used to level the front end.
Water issues must be addressed. Tom King gave an outstanding post on this subject. Just find a very competent contractor and or an engineer to make sure the site is naturally appropriate or you will be spending big $$$$ to have it engineered to be appropriate. I don’t see the expense of cutting into a bank, especially if you don’t have to truck the removed material off site and building a retaining wall being that much more expensive. But not to take advantage of “drive in” storage above by adding a second story may become a regret. Any architect or builder will tell you the first story is the most expensive.
My compliments to Tom King and Wildblue for their excellent posts!!!
Looks like my 20 bucks was taken as some sort of subscription payment according to Paypal.
Feb 12, 2012 Payment ToTHE CHRONICLE OF THE HORSE INC
Completed
Details Payment To THE CHRONICLE OF THE HORSE INC 0W472720KX9174026 -$20.00 USDSelect record 1Feb 12, 2012 Subscription Creation ToTHE CHRONICLE OF THE HORSE INC
ActiveYou have automatic payments scheduled for this subscription. You have automatic payments scheduled for this subscription.
Details Subscription Creation To THE CHRONICLE OF THE HORSE INC
Feb 12, 2012 Payment ToTHE CHRONICLE OF THE HORSE INC
Completed
Details Payment To THE CHRONICLE OF THE HORSE INC 0W472720KX9174026 -$20.00 USDSelect record 1Feb 12, 2012 Subscription Creation ToTHE CHRONICLE OF THE HORSE INC
ActiveYou have automatic payments scheduled for this subscription. You have automatic payments scheduled for this subscription.
Details Subscription Creation To THE CHRONICLE OF THE HORSE INC
