50x150 Hay Barn

The estimate at 50x150 moves with four computed quantities: 7,500 square feet of floor, 400 feet of perimeter, 5,600 square feet of wall and 7,731 square feet of roof. Everything else is site and specification. The plan is only as good as the route into it, which is a site question rather than a building one.

Proportion drives cost here as much as size does: 400 ft of wall around 7,500 sq ft is 0.053 ft of wall per enclosed square foot, and a squarer plan of the same area would carry less. What moves the figure further on a a large-volume seasonal store filled in a burst and drawn down over months is the fit-out large volume forage store implies, along with framed openings and the height chosen for the 50 ft span.

• 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

This page is ordered around height and clearance, because at 50x150 the 14-foot eave limits a hay barn sooner than the plan does.

The footprint holds 10 stack blocks — 2 across by 5 deep — and the remaining 4 feet is marginal: unloading has to happen outside, which is the constraint that decides whether filling continues in poor weather.

What distinguishes 50x150 is depth behaviour: 5 rows along 150 feet after 16 feet of circulation, with 4 feet unaccounted for at the end of the run. Fire separation, egress and occupancy are determined for the specific building and can reshape this plan entirely.

A 50 by 150 footprint is a long corridor of a plan: 7,500 sq ft enclosed by 400 ft of wall, at a 3:1 length-to-width proportion. Along its 150 ft dimension it takes 5 runs of stack blocks at 26 ft, leaving 20 ft over — the 20 ft is where the argument about this size actually happens. A large seasonal store is designed around a few intense days, not around the months of quiet drawdown that follow. Filling rate, not capacity, is what the plan should be tested against, because a building that cannot absorb deliveries fast enough leaves material outside. The machine that lifts the bale sets the door width, the aisle width and the stack height all at once.

This footprint is planned as a large-volume seasonal store filled in a burst and drawn down over months. Two operations coexist across the year: rapid inbound with several machines moving at once, and slow outbound with one. The circulation has to serve the first and tolerate the second. Ventilation openings that are useful in summer are the same ones that drive rain in during winter, which is an orientation decision.

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. Circulation width is the first thing surrendered under pressure and the first thing missed afterwards.

Volume is the reason the building exists, so height is bought deliberately here rather than accepted. What limits it is lifting reach and stack stability, both of which are operational rather than structural questions.

Ventilation across 7,500 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 compact bale store loaded and emptied by hand or with a small loader: there is no inside working space, so bales are handled on the ground outside the doors whatever the weather is doing. Dividing the 7,500 sq ft by the 18 by 26 ft stack block gives roughly 5 positions before circulation is deducted a second time for cross movement. Whether the plan keeps 5 or drops to 1 comes back to the question this footprint is really answering: what does a building need in order to be filled at harvest speed rather than at feeding speed?

The 4-foot leftover depth falls under the 12 feet this platform treats as usable for a hay barn, so unloading has to happen outside, which is the constraint that decides whether filling continues in poor weather. The mezzanine that is added afterwards is the change order that reprices the frame.

The 14 feet of spare width runs the whole 150-foot length — 2,100 square feet of wall strip. It earns its keep as shelving, staging or a walking route, not as another stack block. Storage expands until it meets a wall, so give it a wall on purpose.

Two operations coexist across the year: rapid inbound with several machines moving at once, and slow outbound with one. The circulation has to serve the first and tolerate the second. Ventilation openings that are useful in summer are the same ones that drive rain in during winter, which is an orientation decision. That movement pattern, not the 7,500-square-foot total, is what decides whether the leftover 4 feet is useful here.

The 50-foot gable can carry 2 openings, one per stack block, with 14 feet of wall left for piers between and beside them — the arrangement that keeps each position independently reachable. Two feet of spare width reads as nothing on a plan and as a great deal when a machine is being turned.

The 50 ft ends and the 150 ft sides offer very different opening budgets: 50 ft of end wall has room for one wide opening or two modest ones, while 150 ft of side wall can carry several without the openings competing. On this plan the deciding factor is whether large volume forage store or filling rate planning 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 6 bays at about 25 feet, wider than the 18-foot module — so a position can sit inside a bay without a frame line splitting it. Judge the plan by what has to happen on the worst day of the year, not on an average one.

Two-plus rows change the access question entirely. Every rear position at 50x150 needs either its own opening or an aisle, and 14 feet of spare width is what that aisle has to come from. Rows that cannot be entered independently end up used as one long space.

Volume stores are extended in bays along their length, which preserves the existing faces and access pattern. Adding a second building often works better than lengthening beyond a workable travel distance.

Configured as a large-volume seasonal store filled in a burst and drawn down over months, 50x150 is judged on whether the 10 stack blocks it holds match the operation, and on whether the 14 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 150-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?

• 30x100 moves the count from 10 to 8 stack blocks (2 across by 4 deep), which is the reason to choose between them.
• 50x60 moves the count from 10 to 9 stack blocks (3 across by 3 deep), which is the reason to choose between them.
• 40x80 moves the count from 10 to 8 stack blocks (2 across by 4 deep), which is the reason to choose between them.

Because this footprint is planned as a large-volume seasonal store filled in a burst and drawn down over months, the useful next reads are different from the ones a differently shaped hay barn suggests: large volume forage store, filling rate planning, clear span stacking.