Is it possible to build a 'green' barn? If so, how? Please answer!?

Question

In a couple of years, I'd like to build a completely 'green home', meaning a home which is completely sustainable, and environmentally friendly. I am very involved with animals, and I ride horses. So, is it possible to build an equally 'greem barn'? What materials would I use, and any other details? Thank you

Best answer receives ten points!

Answer 1

Cool question.

I ride too, as well as raising the meat goats.  I have 9 horses.  They range from a large pony, up to a huge Draft horse (she's large even for a Draft).

The horses are now back on the farm in WA state (the rainy Pacific Northwest).

Mostly I believe in good solid three sided shelters for the livestock.  That fresh air keeps them healthy.  Animals in barns can develop pneumonia fairly easily.

That said, we still plan to build a barn.  We are hoping to build our barn with straw bale construction as well as our home, and a very large shop.

Straw bale construction is of course covered on the outside with something like stucco.  So the inside of stalls will be lined with wood, to prevent an animal from chipping the stucco like material off.  

Mostly the barn will be for birthing mothers, an ill, or very elderly horse, and for a milking parlor for myself.  So my barn needs hot and cold running water.  

We will use a white metal roof...fire resistant, and helps the snow loads slide off.  The white reflects the suns rays back up, so the barn does not become too hot.  

One place we looked at before we purchased our current farm, had an old dairy barn, converted into horse stalls.  They did a completely ingenious thing.  The front wall of the stalls was solid, and bolted to the cement floor.  The back wall for all the stalls was of course the wall of the barn itself.  The walls that divided each stall into actual stalls were on giant hinges.  A pin could be pulled, and each stall wall opened so the wall laid completely flat against the back wall of the barn.  Once every stall was opened, it made the former stalls into a big "alley way."  There were large rolling doors on the two outside stalls.  This ment a tractor could be driven all the way through the barn.  This ment that cleaning the stalls COMPLETELY out was a sinch, since a tractor with a loader could do the work.  

That is so happening to any barn I build!  

Straw bale construction is really nice.  It makes a barn that is warm in winter, and cool in summer, because of all that insulation.  It's also very fireproof!  Also quieter with all that insulation.

Here are pictures of an exsisting barn being converted into straw bale:

http://www.hobbyfarms.com/home-and-barn/...

You can do the same thing with those metal shops/barn buildings.  Put the straw bales on the outside of the building, stucco them in, and suddenly you have an extremely well insulated building.  

Pay attention to the winds, rain, and snow of where-ever you plan to build your barn.  On our farm in WA, the nice winds, and the big rainstorms come in from the West, from the Pacific Ocean.  The storms that dump all the snow, and bring the fridged winds come from the North, Canada.  So our barn will be situated to take advantage of the fresh ocean winds, so they can blow through the barn at times and keep the air in their very fresh, but also keep the doors free from the largest of the snow pile-up.  

Our metal roofs will also have gutters that take the water to fill at least four 800 gallon water troughs.  That keeps the rainfall from making so much mud near your barn, and provides a source of very good drinking water for your horses (we don't have acid rain problems in my area).

Here's another site with really good, clear pictures:

http://www.celebratebig.com/pacific-nort...

I lived in Ellensburg for a number of years.  They have hot summers, with long, cold, windy winters.  This will be a great barn to protect the stock.

~Garnet

Permaculture homesteading/farming over 20 years