Second floor of barn CONCRETE?

[rachels.haven]

Hi,
Today we went out house hunting. One of the properties was perfect-perfect little house, perfect kid friendly yard, cleared 7+ acres, and buying it and selling our current one would end our mortgage debt, but it has kind of a strange barn. It used to be a very old chicken facility-nothing strange there-but the second floor of the barn is not wood, but is an inch of concrete (on top of wood, I believe). Why would someone do this? The ground floor is also cement.

 

[farmerjan]

That was very common in older style poultry houses in the Northeast when they were 2 story. Keeps the dust and dirt from filtering down and often one floor was used for baby chicks and the other floor for grow outs or layers. I have seen it in several. Also keeps wet from going through and actually rotting the wood. There was a time when the northeast was a big egg producing region....

Actually good for sanitizing the pens too.... a little bleach water to wash them down.....

 

[rachels.haven]

That is very interesting. Thank you for your answer. I was thinking it was a broiler barn like they had in the south where I grew up, but I couldn't make sense of the top half and lower level of ventilation. My husband seems to think that removing the floor on the second story and adding a hay loft door on either side of it would make it able to hold 4-6 tons (or more) of hay, and if we can find someone to do that, we should be able to find someone to put stalls and two loafing pens in the bottom half, with pens I put up outside (unless they can do that too, idk).
We're still in the maybe phase though. We want the house, but have to win the (gag) bidding/offer process in a sellers market so everything is a "maybe".
On the positive side, if we get this house and move the mess makers and animals out our old house can sell like hotcakes too and we can get onto this new project.

 

[rachels.haven]

Here's a picture of a sunset with the chicken house in it.

 

[farmerjan]

The way those barns were built, removing the floor may affect the strength and integrity of the building. When they were built to have the concrete poured on the top floor, they were done a little different than putting up walls and then putting in a second floor. Why not see about sectioning off part of the second floor for hay and making the other end into a large "playroom" "roughhouse" area for the kids? If the floor is good, it would be invaluable for many other uses. You could put in a large staircase by cutting out a section that can be framed out, and then have an easy way to drop hay down to the animals on the lower floor.

Another thing, the intact floor will help to hold the heat down in the lower section better.

 

[rachels.haven]

If the structure is sound and it will hold tons of hay, I'd be happy to keep the cement. That's even easier.

 

[Alaskan]

I too would keep the cement.

Huge building

 

[B&B Happy goats]

Massive goat castle ...more goats, more goats

 

[farmerjan]

@Nifty none of the little icons when you go to click on like or laughing or whatever, are not showing up on my computer when I just clicked on the Haha one for the previous post. Anyone else having this happen?

 

[Alaskan]

@Nifty none of the little icons when you go to click on like or laughing or whatever, are not showing up on my computer when I just clicked on the Haha one for the previous post. Anyone else having this happen?

I can see them.