Need Advice- Chicks will be ready soon!!

[mandymcg05]

Hey guys! So hubby and I built a medium coop from pallet wood a couple weeks ago. We actually just added onto a very small coop we used 3 years ago. We had the placement perfect.... so we thought.

After several days of rain and storms, we go out to check on the coop and talk about progress, and it’s literally sitting in water. Obviously hindsight... yada yada.

But my question is WHAT DO WE DO NOW?! We have maybe 2-4 weeks before we need to transition our babies outside permanently.

Do we tear down and start over with a foundation?
Do we try and find a way to build a foundation and LIFT this on top of it?

I NEEEEED your help. Photos for suggestions. And please- this is a work in progress. We were NOT finished with it!!! Also would like to point out that our budget isn’t super large. Hence why we were using pallets for construction.
Thanks so much y’all!!

 

[SoJoChickens]

I don't think you need to start over. I think you could run a small trench around the coop/run and direct the water away from the coop/run. Use the soil from the trench to berm up the floor of the coop and run so any water that comes in runs away from the coop and into the trench. As a bonus you could put a couple inches of sand in the coop and run to create better drainage. Anyway, I would probably just work with the ground to change the water run off instead of moving the coop.

My 2 cents!

 

[Ridgerunner]

Ouch, that hurts. Hindsight is beautiful but doesn't help you a lot right now. It sounds like water drains to it and stands. Just raising it isn't going to help that much. If it's standing in water you will have issues. It might be a good thing if you have equipment with a scraper blade or bucket.

Is there a lower spot around? Can you dig a ditch or swale, or maybe put in a French drain to a lower spot to drain the water? If you dig a gully and fill it with sand or small rock that will remove a lot of water.

I don't know how hard it would be to move that to a place that drains. Probably challenging without breaking it down. Raising it could be challenging too. When I built my coop by closing in the end of a shed I hauled in enough dirt to raise the coop floor level by a few inches to keep out water. I also put a berm and swale on the uphill side above the coop to divert h=rainwater runoff. That coop stays dry.

You might see something in here that can help you. Good luck!

Pat’s Big Ol' Mud Page (fixing muddy runs):

https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/how-to-fix-a-muddy-run-chicken-coop.47807/

 

[OlympicChick]

I'm guessing that the whole area where the coop is (even 5 feet all the way around off of it) is swampy when it rains like that? So, even though the coop is covered and is not rained on directly, the water table is high and it just seeps up through the earth?

If that's not the case, then gutters may work and getting chunky wood chips inside the coop as well for drainage.

 

[OlympicChick]

By the way, not the colored wood chips from the big places, but tree chippings from arborists who have cut down trees and need to get rid of the chips.

 

[chris814]

Hey guys! So hubby and I built a medium coop from pallet wood a couple weeks ago. We actually just added onto a very small coop we used 3 years ago. We had the placement perfect.... so we thought.

After several days of rain and storms, we go out to check on the coop and talk about progress, and it’s literally sitting in water. Obviously hindsight... yada yada.

But my question is WHAT DO WE DO NOW?! We have maybe 2-4 weeks before we need to transition our babies outside permanently.

Do we tear down and start over with a foundation?
Do we try and find a way to build a foundation and LIFT this on top of it?

I NEEEEED your help. Photos for suggestions. And please- this is a work in progress. We were NOT finished with it!!! Also would like to point out that our budget isn’t super large. Hence why we were using pallets for construction.
Thanks so much y’all!!

I would dig a trench and use the dirt you dig as a berm against the coop. Gutters would also help.
Good luck

 

[nao57]

Well these guys already went over the fix. Nice. Salutes to all of you who already helped her out.

There are a couple other things to still think about.

I really like the berm and sand shoring up idea with the trench around. In the old days people used to do drainage trenches in farms that were next to swamps or had swampy spots in them to drain things out.

OK...you are thinking of moving them out there in 2 - 4 weeks?

How long does your wet season last in comparison to that? (That's one thing to think about.) Try to think about your wet season in both terms of the rain and also when the snowmelt is draining through wetlands in your area if you are on the plains also, or near river or flood zones.)

And what state are you in?

I hope I don't upset anyone but that midwest flooding last year. I'm expecting more of the same this year but hopefully not on the same level. All the moisture comes down from the Rocky Mountains snow melt. (How does the snow levels in the Rockies look from this past winter? And how does that compare with last year's when there was flooding. People should be praying more also.)

Others could be taking notice of these drainage fixes so they won't have to later.

 

[mandymcg05]

Thanks guys. The whole area around the coop is actually holding water. We didn’t think this part of the property did that. Hubby is pretty upset so I guess we will be tearing it down. I didn’t want to do that but he doesn’t think the trench would work. Thank y’all for the input though. Hopefully we can build a new coop in the couple of weeks we have left. Kinda sucks. But I should have done more research and built a foundation first.

 

[mandymcg05]

Well these guys already went over the fix. Nice. Salutes to all of you who already helped her out.

There are a couple other things to still think about.

I really like the berm and sand shoring up idea with the trench around. In the old days people used to do drainage trenches in farms that were next to swamps or had swampy spots in them to drain things out.

OK...you are thinking of moving them out there in 2 - 4 weeks?

How long does your wet season last in comparison to that? (That's one thing to think about.) Try to think about your wet season in both terms of the rain and also when the snowmelt is draining through wetlands in your area if you are on the plains also, or near river or flood zones.)

And what state are you in?

I hope I don't upset anyone but that midwest flooding last year. I'm expecting more of the same this year but hopefully not on the same level. All the moisture comes down from the Rocky Mountains snow melt. (How does the snow levels in the Rockies look from this past winter? And how does that compare with last year's when there was flooding. People should be praying more also.)

Others could be taking notice of these drainage fixes so they won't have to later.

We are in Kentucky. Everyday is different than the last. And there’s no telling what we will have in the future. Even our weather men don’t know what’s happening lol. I think we may try and keep some of the walls and just move the whole thing and put it up off the ground.

 

[nao57]

Thanks guys. The whole area around the coop is actually holding water. We didn’t think this part of the property did that. Hubby is pretty upset so I guess we will be tearing it down. I didn’t want to do that but he doesn’t think the trench would work. Thank y’all for the input though. Hopefully we can build a new coop in the couple of weeks we have left. Kinda sucks. But I should have done more research and built a foundation first.

Sorry.

I hope things get better. But if he's upset that could indicate he really wanted it to work out. If he wants it work with you that's a good thing.

But is you really are going to start over, I wonder if you try to just move your coop without losing all the effort you did?

A lot of people don't do foundations on small size coops. They do them on larger farm buildings though. You do see big

We are in Kentucky. Everyday is different than the last. And there’s no telling what we will have in the future. Even our weather men don’t know what’s happening lol. I think we may try and keep some of the walls and just move the whole thing and put it up off the ground.

That sounds better than losing all your work. I'd try to move it too, and try to salvage your work. And I bet people would volunteer to help you. Times like now a lot of people see the need to be more community centered. (But there are bad apples too. Sometimes its hard to know who to trust.)

If you had 2 or 3 volunteers, perhaps that are already family members nearby you could probably just get everyone together and pick it up together and move it.

For what its worth, I don't know a lot of people that do foundations on really small budget coops. Some add wheels instead, no joke.