50x120 Hay Barn

This page is ordered around height and clearance, because at 50x120 the 14-foot eave limits a hay barn sooner than the plan does.

The footprint holds 15 rows — 3 across by 5 deep — and leaves 10 feet of depth for a turning bay at the open end deep enough for a loader to swing without reversing the full length of a row.

Commitment first: 65% of the 6,000 square feet goes to rows at 260 square feet each, and 1,820 square feet survives as edge strip. A footprint is worth its own decision when that split lands where the work does. Utilities entering on the wrong elevation quietly rewrite the interior layout.

A 50 by 120 footprint is a long corridor of a plan: 6,000 sq ft enclosed by 340 ft of wall, at a 2.4:1 length-to-width proportion. Along its 120 ft dimension it takes 6 runs of rows at 20 ft, leaving 0 ft over — the 0 ft is where the argument about this size actually happens. Taken purely as arithmetic, 50 by 120 gives 3 rows across the 50 ft dimension once 10 ft is reserved for movement, and 6 deep along the 120 ft dimension. Run as a a deep-row store where bales are stacked in long runs back from a single face, 1 ft across is below the 10 ft this use needs to be worth planning, so there is no turning bay, so every retrieval ends in a long reverse down the row, which is where damage to bales and to the building happens A stack against a cold wall behaves differently from one in the middle of the floor, which is an argument for a perimeter gap.

At 50x120 the operating question is a specific one: how deep can a row run before retrieving from the back of it costs more than the space it saved? That is a different question from the one a hay barn of another shape has to answer, and it is why this footprint is planned as a deep-row store where bales are stacked in long runs back from a single face rather than as generic covered area.

Across a 50-foot span the 3:12 pitch adds 6.3 feet between eave and ridge. The centreline measures 20.3 feet; anything parked or stacked near a wall lives with the 14-foot eave. A wider bay is a structural decision and a longer bay is a layout decision; the two are often confused.

Height in a deep-row store multiplies across the whole run, which makes it more valuable here than in any other arrangement. It is bounded by lifting reach and by how stable a stack of that material remains as it is drawn down.

Ventilation across 6,000 square feet at this height: airflow through a stack is the reason many hay barns stay open-sided; enclosing them changes how the stored crop behaves.

The storage arrangement this floor tends toward in a heavy season is a shared building holding forage at one end and equipment at the other: the two uses meet directly, so equipment stands against the stack and the stack is worked around the equipment. Rows run the length of the building with the aisle at the open end rather than through the middle. A central aisle looks efficient on paper and costs two faces of stack that would otherwise be solid.

Depth arithmetic leaves a working end zone here. 500 square feet sits past the last row, which is why 50x120 tends to be planned with a turning bay at the open end deep enough for a loader to swing without reversing the full length of a row designed in rather than added later. Insulating later is possible; framing for insulation later is much harder.

The 11 feet of spare width runs the whole 120-foot length — 1,320 square feet of wall strip. It earns its keep as shelving, staging or a walking route, not as another row. Long spans buy flexibility that is only worth paying for if the operation actually changes shape.

Retrieval is sequential by design. Ordering the rows by when their contents are wanted — earliest at the front, latest deepest — is the single planning decision that determines whether a deep store works. The machine that lifts the bale sets the door width, the aisle width and the stack height all at once. That movement pattern, not the 6,000-square-foot total, is what decides whether the leftover 10 feet is useful here.

The 50-foot gable can carry 3 openings, one per row, with 11 feet of wall left for piers between and beside them — the arrangement that keeps each position independently reachable. Service routes are cheap to plan now and expensive to retrofit through a finished shell.

The 50 ft ends and the 120 ft sides offer very different opening budgets: 50 ft of end wall has room for one wide opening or two modest ones, while 120 ft of side wall can carry several without the openings competing. On this plan the deciding factor is whether deep row forage storage or retrieval sequencing should be the first thing reached from the door.

Loader-handled from the open side, with the working face moving as the stack grows and shrinks.

Nominal bay division computes to 5 bays at about 24 feet, wider than the 13-foot module — so a position can sit inside a bay without a frame line splitting it. Depth is bought cheaply and width expensively, which is why this proportion tends to be argued about before anything else.

With 5 rows deep, the rear row is behind the front one. Without a route past it, those rows become storage positions rather than working ones — the real cost of depth at this width. Height is the dimension people regret; it cannot be added later without rebuilding the frame line.

Extension is cheapest along the 120 ft dimension, where each added bay repeats work already framed; widening past 50 ft is a different frame rather than a longer one. Growing to 50 by 140 adds a 7th run of rows — useful if the constraint is rows rather than the 0 ft already spare at the far end.

Configured as a deep-row store where bales are stacked in long runs back from a single face, 50x120 is judged on whether the 15 rows it holds match the operation, and on whether the 11 feet of spare width leaves the route this mode depends on.

• Does the work need three lanes and a working lane, or two lanes with an interior work hall between them, or does it need a second lane that this 50-foot span cannot give?
• Is the 120-foot length being bought for depth, or for the repeated bays — a long repeating bay sequence, so segment boundaries are set by bay lines rather than by walls?
• What stack height do you plan, and can the loader place a bale above it inside the building?
• Which sides stay open for airflow, and which face the weather?

• 30x80 moves the count from 15 to 10 rows (2 across by 5 deep), which is the reason to choose between them.
• 40x60 moves the count from 15 to 9 rows (3 across by 3 deep), which is the reason to choose between them.
• 50x50 moves the count from 15 to 6 rows (3 across by 2 deep), which is the reason to choose between them.

Because this footprint is planned as a deep-row store where bales are stacked in long runs back from a single face, the useful next reads are different from the ones a differently shaped hay barn suggests: deep row forage storage, retrieval sequencing, row depth planning.

No price appears on this page. The quantities that scale an estimate at 50x120 are 6,000 square feet of slab, 74.1 cubic yards of nominal concrete, 4,760 square feet of wall cladding and 6,185 square feet of roof cladding. Every foot of width added multiplies through the roof and the frame; every foot of length mostly adds skin.

A long simple shell with one open end is inexpensive per square foot, so the cost argument in a deep store is about the apron and the approach rather than the building.

• eave height set by handling clearance above the stack
• how many sides remain open
• the apron the loader and trailers use
• roof drainage over an open working face