Wind

[Texarkana]

@StormyDay

Yeah. In normal wind situations it doesn’t matter as much and usually the recommendation is to have your largest flat side of the building face the winter wind direction so that it doesn’t whistle up your barn isle.

But in really high wind situations, it’s actually better to do the opposite to try to streamline your buildings as much as possible.

If you take a shoe box and blow a table fan at it at high speed, you can kind of see (or rather, feel) what I’m talking about. The large flat surface will cause strange wind patterns around the box (and might even blow it away). Turn it so the end is facing to the wind, and you won’t have as many problems.

In real life, it translated to the one barn having a wind tunnel effect on the short sides, a strange down-current on the non-wind facing side, and terrible buffeting on the flat side facing into the wind.

That makes sense. I guess good doors are the answer. I really hate wind whipping through the aisle.

A few years ago I boarded at a barn about 30 min north of here. Something must happen with the winds as you move east around here, as that property was also quite windy. Not as bad as my farm, but much worse than where my home was at the time and much worse than the other farm I had boarded at in this region. Anyway, their barn was a huge repurposed agricultural storage structure and the wind ripped through there something awful. It was open on both ends; they really needed to close the entire ends off but it was such a huge space it was an expensive task. The tried all sorts of wind screens and partial builds, but the wind took them all out. Luckily the stall walls made it comfortable for the horses, and hey, ventillation was great!

[candyappy]

@Texarkana

For those of you who live in windier than average locales, how do you deal with it?

Curse , complain and ask God why it needs to be this windy? ( Winter -Early Spring).

Thank God for that same wind when it (temperamentally) chooses to blow during the Summer when you actually want it.

[goodhors]

We get an almost constant wind here, from the W/SW. Great in summer cooling the barn, not so great in winter. Our storms, just windy or with precipitation, are much stronger in the last 10 years than previously. Everything seems to just be “more” now. More rain at once, more strong winds. Not so much with snow, but my location is never as bad as everything gets around us. Even 5 miles south may get double the snow we see.

We built a pole barn, center aisle facing west, aligned with the little old barn already in place. I would build it the same if we had to do it over, for the summer breezes. We have a woodlot to the north , but trunks are not much for stopping wind. Great for shading the little barn in summer though. Locally there are many kinds of planted windbreaks. The Extension Service recommends planting them in alternating rows, instead of just one line. People use various pines, firs, all kinds of tall shrubs, and mixes of trees and shrubs for flowers, bird berries, seasonal interest. Doing the alternating rows, the tree or shrub blocks off the space of trees behind. Here, the pines and firs get very big, so you need to allow lots of space between trees and rows.

[BroncoMo]

I live in south eastern Wyoming, which, I have no idea how it didn’t make the list. I live in a "wind accelerator "… Google it.

Most of my sheds are oriented with the opening facing east. Prevailing wind is from the west and north. The problems I have are with just standard 3 side run ins; the wind wraps around the northern wall and dumps snow inside. The sheds that don’t have this issue are ones that have a bit of an eastern wall, on the north east side. So essentially the sheds are more fortified than a 3 side, really a 4 side with a door in the middle of the eastern wall. If the wind cannot wrap around the northern wall and rather hits another wall on the east, it won’t dump snow inside.

Hopefully this makes some semblance of sense. Otherwise I can try to draw a picture. As far as barns, I simply don’t open the west doors. Ever. In fact, in my foaling barn I have a plan to completely wall off the west door because I never ever open it.

[Texarkana]

What I’m learning is wind sucks!

[goodhors]

You might want to reconsider closing off the west doors as a safety precaution. During a farm fire safety class, they pointed out the usefulness of working doors at each end, to get horses out of. This was both for roof/ wind damages as well as fires.

The main speaker told of problems getting animals out with doors blocked in any way. Puts firefighters at risk, so they may be unwilling to even enter with only one exit point that may get cut off.

With fires, you have an incredibly short time to get anything out of a barn before it is too dangerous to be in there. Only a couple minutes. Then heat and smoke will damage lungs without an air tank to breathe with. He said 99% of horses will not run out, they have to be lead out. Being in there longer than that couple minutes has burned their lungs, probably won’t survive even if you do get them out.

So maybe not closing off the doors is a better way to go. Have you checked out ways to seal off door edges, like are seen in truck delivery docks? That could help with wind leaking in, yet not make the doors unusable if needed.

[BroncoMo]

Technically is more of a big run in shed with concrete walls that has no door on the east and horses are only stalled in it when the weather is bad and foals can’t go out. It’s 3 stalls and literally doesn’t have a door on the east side; so the aisle way is a run in for anyone living in that paddock. There is about a 3 food drop outside the west door due to location.

I absolutely understand the concern regarding a fire. I simply don’t use my “barns” in a normal sense.

[goodhors]

I was picturing a more traditional barn, thinking it would be very closed in.

That fire safety class sure changed how I look at things now! Always checking for easy exits, paddocks outside to turn horses into so they can’t run back into the barn. AND that aisles are kept clear all the time. Speaker showed facilities with good layouts overcome by lazy storage of thing blocking aisles, exit doors, not keeping things orderly. One barn burned because the help had disconnected the water sprinklers inside, never reconnected the water. Then parked a vehicle with a hot muffler inside on floor with loose hay that caught fire! But looking at things now does keep me from doing some unwise things!

[Bluey]

Our problem with West sliding doors being blown off at times was that the doors were sliders.
Once we put overhead doors in, they are way easier to open and have not had one of those blown off yet.

We had one South door blown in, but that day we had 101 mph winds.
We have now there a new one with reinforcing wind struts and no more problems.
All other overhead doors were fine, even the West ones.

Just more to consider.

[BroncoMo]

I absolutely get that. If I were to build rather than having fallen in on buildings, I would have ample escape routes. There’s truly nothing traditional about my wonky little 1950s set up

But using this particular “barn” as an example. Considering there are stalls on both sides of the aisle, the wind does not wrap around the north east corner and dump inside nearly as bad as it does with the three sided sheds. When I put in new paddocks and sheds, I believe I’ll put a short “4th” wall coming off the north east corner to help with this.

[BroncoMo]

That’s a good idea. I want to replace my sliding doors with overheads. Never thought about looking for reinforced wind struts.