Three car garage converted to a barn?

[Hermein]

You may have read some of my many, many whines about trying to build a barn in our new home/community. There’ve been layers upon layers upon pitfalls of promises not kept, permits not issued, missing engineering, and massive piles of bureaucratic BS.

On a property I saw today, there was nice fencing, trail access, tack room/feed storage combo, a graded pad where a barn used to be (???) with electricity and water to the pad. There’s also a 3-car garage setting out in the field near the pad and storage building. (This is in addition to the 2-car garage attached to the house.)

The 3-car garage is about 22’ by 26’ or 572 sq ft, or about 4, 12 x 12 stalls.

Has anybody converted a garage into a barn? How did you deal with the cement floor? In & out access? Any not-so-obvious pitfalls?

Thanks.

[Dance_To_Oblivion]

Biggest concerns would be ventilation. I would probably use stall mattresses over the concrete for the stalls and then rubber mats, or even better those adorable rubber bricks for aisles and feel totally fine about the floor.

[clanter]

We live in city so when we built out primary barn it was built with a cross intent to have the ability to convert into a garage or workshop (actually appraises at twice the value as a garage vs a barn)

The concrete floor, ours is pave stone which is actually harder than standard concrete… we used 1 inch mats that were made as mats not recycled material. With shavings bedding our horses have never had a any problems and they a have been in the barn for twenty plus years.

Our stalls are free standing (not attached to the building) we did this so the stall would be considered furniture in the legal terms so if we sold the place we could take our stalls with us (and mats and anything else that was not attached to a structure) Three of our stalls are 12 by 12 one is 12 by 10… the 16h thoroughbred mare with bad leg has pretty of room in a 12by12 the others are Morgans which really could have been put into 10 by 10s

Concerning your garage, will ventilation be a problem?

[BUSY]

• which direction does this garage open to ?

South `` you should be fine (depending on where you are located)

if not

you would benefit from adding another big door on one side /end

Stall windows …mats throughout

Ceiling fans and an exhaust fan

Should be workable :yes:

On second thought that garage sounds like a run-in-shed …?

Build barn on that other graded pad ?

ETA ? overhead garage doors or sliding doors ? you don’t want electric overhead doors too dangerous with horses IMHO … overhead doors changed out to sliding doors instead. Are you leaving the garage doors down permanently ? Think of driving an ATV with a manure cart through the garage/barn ? possible ?

[js]

How are you visualizing the stall layout for a building that is 22’x26’ and getting 4 stalls? Are there 2 stalls on each side backed up together with no center aisle? Do you need 4 stalls? Our first barn was a oversized garage that we converted, 36x36. We put in 3 stalls along one side and cut out doors for each stall for access to paddocks. It has a large center aisle and the other side was walled off for hay and feed storage. Floor was cement so we bought good thick mats for the stalls and aisle.

[csaper58]

What is the 3 car garage made of? Does it have a slab or dirt floor? Is it something like this? www.alansfactoryoutlet.com/carports Or, does it have walls? A walled structure built for cars or tractors does not have the ventilation horses need.

Can you tell if there was a structure on the empty pad? I would want to know that, because around here one might suspect a meth lab had burned down. That could leave some nasty chemicals in the ground.

Could the garage be moved to the pad? Is it portable?

[Hermein]

The garage is stick built–two big doors on one side, a people door on the opposite side. It is wooden with a slab floor. I’ll try to get a photo to post.

There are foot prints for two barns on the pad–one looks to be 6-stall with a breeze way. The other barn footprint is longer, but stalls aren’t indicated. I noticed that there were corners of buried cement with good sized bolts sticking up on those corners of the pad.

If I were to build a barn from scratch, I would have even more bs to shovel and more money thrown down the bureaucratic hole. For a barn over 120 sq ft, the county wants engineering, and a $$ permit, plus inspections. Then, the hoa wants esthetic control, plus $500 for god only knows what, although they will reimburse part of the $500 after the barn is completed.

I’ve been trying to get shelter up for 18 months from 200 miles away, so I’m very, very tired of the whole game. The attraction of the garage conversion is that it’s already on the property, so there would be relatively little interference from the county, but I’m sure the hoa would want to be involved.

[BUSY]

This garage is ‘barn’ workable ! Really !
You have found some good luck here !