II have a small free span building I am converting to a 3 stall barn. I am planning to line the exterior walls with 4’ high rough sawn oak and finish above with pine TandG also using the pine as stall dividers. I’ve been looking at lots of prefab barns and noticed some run the kickboards vertically. What is the benefit to using vertical kickboards over horizontal? Cheaper to use shorter boards or some other benefit?
The local Run-in builder puts his kick boards vertically to minimize the ability to have an edge that the horses can paw at or chew on… His reasoning - not mine.
Going back to the 50’s my family has always
Going back to the 50’s my family has always put the boards vertically. II have always done the same without asking why, lollol.
Adding to that ^, the framing on the building walls is horizontal, so easier to just screw suitable thick boards to them vertically.
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I prefer the boards to be horizontal. It’s easier to replace the lower ones if they ever rot. (Speaking of a run-in shed here, so out in the elements vs. a more protected indoor installation. But still, if you bed deeply then stuff gets piled up against the bottom boards.)
And because we mill our own rough cut lumber, the uneven thicknesses also serve as anti-cast rails. If a horse gets stuck near the wall, it’s not a smooth surface, hopefully a hoof will catch on one of the boards and allow him to push off.
As pretty as those smooth tongue and groove walls look, I prefer my mismatched rough cut hardwood!
The framing is vertical so horizontal would be less of a task. If there was some compelling reason to go vertical we could run stringers. Sounds unnecessary. Thank you everyone.
we have drop in steel channels that accept 2 inch lumber, all of the stall walls are horizontal. We did add one vertical 5/4 deck board as a center of the wall vertical to lock the wall together. Used a decking board as it has rounded edges
yup, this is what we have too. The great thing about the U-channels is that it’s easy to remove a divider wall if you need a double large stall for some reason (mare and foal, or long term stall rest, for example).
I thought the OP wanted to clad the back walls, not make divisions between stalls?
Guess that U-channels and dropping boards would work there also.
Not as sturdy as screwing them on the posts, but then, there won’t be horses on both sides there either, so less pushing on those boards.
We also would have put boards between stalls horizontally.
Maybe even reinforce them every 1/3 or at least at half point with strap iron or boards, depending on distances.
Against or as walls, either direction would work.
Vertical might be a way to use up short board lengths left over from other places. Saves buying more, long boards to go horizontally. Longer boards are always more expensive. Older builders were all about use up everything at a jobsite.
“Board and batton” is a stye of barn boarding - so one reason would be preferance for the look.
Or - perhaps - rain would tend to run downwards instead of along and into the inside?
That also, we didn’t want to use the boards horizontally and have to cut 2’ off some super nice boards we had left over from framing the ceiling of the tack room, so it would hold heavy loads stacked above it.
Going vertically let us use the whole board, no waste left over.
Yes, looking to clad the inside of the exterior walls up to 4 feet, using the TandG above and inside U channels horizontally as stall dividers. Sounds like others have used oak in U channels?
To save having to replace boards due to rot, be sure the bottom board ( or 2 depending on how deep you will bed) are treated boards. The boards above that can be what ever you want.
If you use oak in the U channel, it will more than likely not be T&G. If you use it, be sure to add enough vertical supports so that a horse can’t kick it and get their leg caught between the boards. I’ve seen it happen. It’s an awful situation and can create a devastating wound.
Yes, in the past I’ve used a vertical support for the pine TandG dividers. Using oak for the dividers seems that it would be difficult to add vertical supports to over time as it hardens, making it harder to take the divider up and down, limiting the benefit of the flexibility of using the U channels?
You would just have to pre drill the holes for the screw locations. I have friends that have stout oak boards to divide their stalls and they make foaling stalls out of several of them and then convert them back to regular stalls without much difficulty.
