Covering Dirt Floor Barn

Dust kicks up because it is fine and small enough to be influenced.

Covering dirt floor barn.

I have a 60x120 ft pole barn in my backyard. If you want to practice compost bedding adding bedding to the top periodically to create a clean surface and allowing the bottom to compost and produce heat all winter then it is probably the best choice. So make sure adequate ventilation is in your plans. When you have animals housed in a barn dirt floors will provide softer ground to stand or rest on than other types of flooring such as concrete.

While ventilation is always important moisture naturally occurs with dirt floors. Since barns are constantly exposed to the mess that goes along with horses including manure dirt and hair the floors need to be easy to keep clean. Rubber and synthetic bricks are other options and these are easy on a horse s legs provide good drainage and are non slip. Flooring needs to have good traction so that horses and their handlers don t slip and fall.

Cover the dirt floor with a layer of 10 mil plastic sheeting to serve as a vapor barrier which will keep moisture from seeping through the dirt and onto your wood floor. Interlocking brick or pavers are attractive but present the same problems as concrete floors. Cover the entire floor with gravel coarse sand chipped wood or a similar larger particle product to a depth of about 3 inches. Because of the grooves between the pavers they can be a bit harder to clean.

My shop which is a 24x60 ft insulated room with concrete slab floor has been built in one corner of the barn. Barn flooring is the foundation of a clean and safe barn. Lay the sheets in rows across the dirt floor. Part of the garage we did years ago and it has worked very.

The other side of the same end of the barn used to be a 10 or 12 horse stable but all the stalls have been removed leaving a concrete slab on the center walkway strip and just dirt floor in the areas on both sides where the horse stalls. Overlap the bottom of the walls with two inches of the sheet edges raised upward along the wall s surface. A big con is that you have a big cleanout ahead of you in the spring and you will have to dig out and replace some of the dirt after the cleanout. Dirt well draining soil really can be a good flooring.