All our doors in all our barns have been swinging doors and have yet to need a repair or replace one of those, for decades of use?
They were made right an hung right.
Working in barns with sliding doors, even the best made door, if a horse rubs it’s behind hard enough on one, or kicks it hard, or bangs on the door, some or other on it may need repairing for it to slide properly.
Still, in the right situation, you may just have to live with that, if they are the better fit.
my experience has been the opposite; never had to fix or replace a sliding – had many a swinging break on me or need replacement. i think for a standard barn, sliding is better for many reasons.
the biggest one, as a worker being it is not my (or barn staff’s) job or place to train a horse to stand around while we open/close doors. many horses are unruly/excited after breakfast for TO and it is not a worker’s place to teach the horse manners… and a horse dancing in the aisle while you struggle to open/close doors is a very dangerous pursuit IMHO.
[QUOTE=beowulf;8805424]
my experience has been the opposite; never had to fix or replace a sliding – had many a swinging break on me or need replacement. i think for a standard barn, sliding is better for many reasons.
the biggest one, as a worker being it is not my (or barn staff’s) job or place to train a horse to stand around while we open/close doors. many horses are unruly/excited after breakfast for TO and it is not a worker’s place to teach the horse manners… and a horse dancing in the aisle while you struggle to open/close doors is a very dangerous pursuit IMHO.[/QUOTE]
I see your point, but our swinging doors open flush with the front of the stalls, should not be in the way at all.
If someone is leaving them swinging and there is stuff going on in the aisle, well, yes, something may hit them.
I have seen horses when excited to go out try to rush thru sliding doors before they were completely open and hang a hip and bend the door top out of service, it needed to be repaired.
I do see that if people are not careful, they can have troubles with any door, if things don’t go right.
I prefer the sliders. Ideal would be a slider that has the flip down yoke grill so they can stick their heads out but not grab things on the door or the horse walking down the isle.
The barn I currently board at has sliding doors. The main barn is 27 years old. Only one of the sliders has needed repair. The horse that is in that stall sits on the door and it broke the plastic alignment wheel and flexed the metal bracing on the one side.
We had swinging doors at one co-op barn I was at. The aisle was 12 foot wide. We had horses that would try to bite the other horses when they came down the aisle. People would leave them open when they brought their horse out so the door would swing and partially block the aisle. It was awkward to close it behind you while leading a horse.
The 12 foot swinging gates I would hate. They are big heavy and awkward. I hate dealing with 12 foot gates in the pastures.
I’m gearing up to replace all of my stalls - including the crappy sliding doors that I hate with a passion! :mad:
Maybe it’s just me, or maybe it’s just the way these stalls were constructed, but there is so much hay and shavings and grit that gets stuck in the bottom slider that I keep a hoof pick hanging at each stall because once I open that door, I have to clean the track EVERY SINGLE TIME to get the door closed fully again.
I also have a mare that is smart enough to hang her head out of the open drop down window and in one swift move, knock the door off it’s track and push into it to escape. :nonchalance:
Individual swinging doors WILL be installed when my two new stalls are being put in. HATE sliding doors.
My sliders are 12yo & have never had a problem.
They are hung about 6" above ground-level, so hay getting stuck is not an issue & sweeping is easy.
They hang from a track above with just a bracket at the bottom so no issues there either.
I think the fact that they are suspended from the top track makes them work so well.
“Someone” (I’m looking at you ginormous WB!) kicked/leaned so that the bottom bracket got loose, but mechanically-inept Me fixed that with a screwdriver.
My horses will stand in their stalls, doors slid fully open, until I tell them it’s okay to step out.
Usually to tour the aisle, sampling stacked hay or run laps in the attached indoor.
It’s just me here, so no problem with multi-owners horses’ training issues.
I think by now the OP is confused enough, there are all kinds of suggestions and preferences, as she can see, to decide what may work best for her and her horses, in her barn.
I don’t think there is a perfect solution, maybe different options for different situations that are just right for that barn, in either kind of door.
[QUOTE=fordtraktor;8805308]
I don’t love blankets on the actual door which is your only option if you have a sliding door.[/QUOTE]
Huh?
On a 12’ stall front, you have 4’ for the door, 4’ for the overlap when the door slides and 4’ that is not door and the door doesn’t cover when open.
I have my fans and my blanket bar on the front of the stall, not on the door.
Just to confuse matters, I have 4’ wire filled gates as stall doors. Yes, they swing, but I set mine inside the “frames” of the doors, so while they can’t swing out to lie flush against the wall, they can swing both in and out, depending on what’s convenient for me at the time. I have two way gate latches, and they’ve been great!
Probably not really what you’re looking for, OP, since you don’t want to add an extra post, but I really like how they’ve worked out for me and they weren’t expensive at all (and there’s minimal hardware to deal with).
For the record, I’ve worked in places with sliders and they’re fine (unless they get off track, at which point they’re annoying) and lovely stall fronts with nifty drop downs and feed windows and such, and I did consider going that way, but the gates were fast, inexpensive and really easy to put up, so they won the day for me.
I think I decided just to throw an extra post in the ground and do a 4’ gate. Now I’m trying to decide if the mesh gate is worth the extra money compared to just the plain pipe gate.
But now that I’m building a stall front wall, can I get some insight on how to build it? It’s going to be a half wall with welded wire mesh on the top half. I get the construction of the outside of the stall, but how is the inside of the stall finished. Ply wood? More 2x4 going down? What did you do with yours? I need it strong enough to hang water buckets on
Following.
always hated sliding doors. I don’t know about these days but they were always too heavy and would come off the track. When we built our barn we bought chain link fence gates for temporary doors. I like them so much I would probably replace them with the same again. They go all the way down to the ground so a horse cant’ get a foot under and let the breeze through (I’m in Florida). Rain coming in has never been a problem because of the way the barn is situated. I can see into the stalls without having to open the doors and they were only about $45 apiece.
I’m late to the party, but wanted to add something no one has said. Swinging doors that swing INTO the stall not into the aisle. I have metal screens. The bottom edge sits about 18" off the floor and the top edge has a neck V that is high enough so the horse can get his head over but not twisted around to pull things off the wall. The screens fit flush on the inside wall if I want to leave them open.
I did a bunch of research and a conversation with my vet sold me. In their large practice they get at least one horse a year who has to either be euthanized or retired with an injury caused by lying down and getting a foot underneath a sliding door. Most doors will lift slightly in their tracks allowing a foot to get underneath but the problem is they then can’t get that foot back in. My stalls also have dutch doors going outside so I have two ways to get to a cast horse.
One of the things I love that I didn’t foresee is with a very alpha gelding most every time I go in his stall he has to move his feet to let me in. (In alpha games he who moves their feet first drops below the alpha.) So just going into the stall establishes my dominance and with this horse and that’s very helpful. All the horses I’ve brought in have learned to step away from the door within about a week.
Mine were custom so this is close but not exactly what I have. It’s #5 in the gallery: http://www.lucasequine.com/photo_gallery_view.php?id=10
We used kits from ARC stall systems. They’re aluminum, so no rust, and the doors and stall fronts were pretty easy to put together. Love them!
[QUOTE=HungarianHippo;8819695]
We used kits from ARC stall systems. They’re aluminum, so no rust, and the doors and stall fronts were pretty easy to put together. Love them![/QUOTE]
Those look very nice.
Two safety concerns, I would not use bars below, where a horse laying down may roll over and still be able to poke a leg thru the bars if he hits that just right.
For air flow below 4’, use wire mesh screens, not bars.
Also, those fold down door openings made of bars, horses have been known to hang their teeth on them when messing with it, like licking the bars and break their teeth off or even break their jaw.
Better if those are solid enough a horse’s mouth can’t get hung on them at all.
The bars look perfect for upper stall areas, good material and close enough a horse should not stick a foot thru there, generally not having the force to push thru they can have if kicking below that.
If you want a gate, you can get a custom one here: http://candpengmfg.com/id5.html
They are SUPER sturdy. I ordered some for the top of my Dutch doors because I wanted to turn horses out in the field where the doors open, and didn’t want horses fighting over the doors. They powder coated them in a perfect match to the existing red barn trim on the bottom doors. They look so nice and are much sturdier than most of the gates on the market. They were less expensive than a regular Dover-type gate for me.
Here is a pic of mine: https://fordtraktor.shutterfly.com/pictures/177
I always do my stalls and run in linings with 2 by 12s, a treated one on the bottom.
OP, here’s my setup: https://flic.kr/p/e4Ub7t
The “fronts” are just more of the same tongue in groove as the kickboards (left over from the construction = free!) - As is, they are plenty strong enough to hang a bucket from. Should I ever decide to put something up above the TNG, I figured I’d just order grills from Ramm or somebody and slot those over the TNG.
(I haven’t added a divider yet, but if I ever do, it’ll be U-channels and more TNG (with a brace strip), and maybe a divider grill if I don’t want to do a solid wall.)
I like the mesh gates better than the pipe ones for safety’s sake - fewer places for feet to get caught and less stuff to bend/break. Also, if you hang them a bit lower, they’ll keep the dogs out of the stalls. (Mine are high enough for small corgis to sneak under if they’re being bad…)
[QUOTE=Bluey;8819828]
Those look very nice.
Two safety concerns, I would not use bars below, where a horse laying down may roll over and still be able to poke a leg thru the bars if he hits that just right.
For air flow below 4’, use wire mesh screens, not bars.
Also, those fold down door openings made of bars, horses have been known to hang their teeth on them when messing with it, like licking the bars and break their teeth off or even break their jaw.
Better if those are solid enough a horse’s mouth can’t get hung on them at all.
The bars look perfect for upper stall areas, good material and close enough a horse should not stick a foot thru there, generally not having the force to push thru they can have if kicking below that.[/QUOTE]
Yes, our walls and doors are wood to 4’ and bars above-- no drop-down windows or swing-out feeders. Just basic stalls.
if you’re open to swinging door (I prefer sliding, but there are pros/cons to each) and you don’t want to put a post in, how about something like this?
I can see it not holding a horse who’s tough on his stall, but the pin holding the non-door wall gives you the standard door when you need it, but also gives you a wider opening for an emergency, and doesn’t put a permanent post in…
eta: I got this from http://www.rockinjhorsestalls.com/stallfronts.html which has some beautiful barns and stall front ideas you can use for inspiration.
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