60x80 Hay Barn

This page is ordered around the floor itself, because at 60x80 the 4,800 sq ft available decides what a hay barn can hold before any other consideration applies.

The footprint holds 8 shared bays — 4 across by 2 deep — and leaves 20 feet of depth for a separation strip between the stacked end and the parked end that keeps chaff, dust and fuel apart.

Efficiency is the useful number here: 600 square feet of enclosed floor per shared bay, against a 336-square-foot module. That is generous — the footprint is doing more than hold modules. Every foot of width added multiplies through the roof and the frame; every foot of length mostly adds skin.

A 60 by 80 footprint is a mildly directional plan: 4,800 sq ft enclosed by 280 ft of wall, at a 1.3:1 length-to-width proportion. Along its 80 ft dimension it takes 3 runs of shared bays at 24 ft, leaving 8 ft over — the 8 ft is where the argument about this size actually happens. Mixed buildings are normal on a working farm and are rarely planned as such. The two uses have genuinely opposed requirements — one wants air movement and an untouched stack, the other wants a hard floor and frequent movement — and the plan should state which one is the priority. Retrieval order is set when the building is filled, so filling is a planning task rather than a labouring one.

This footprint is planned as a shared building holding forage at one end and equipment at the other. Seasonal peaks fall at different times, which is what makes the pairing work: the equipment end empties as the stack fills. The plan should be drawn against the week when both are full at once. Ventilation openings that are useful in summer are the same ones that drive rain in during winter, which is an orientation decision.

The storage arrangement this floor tends toward in a heavy season is a drive-through store worked from both ends without reversing: there is no passing point, so the lane is single-direction in practice and two machines cannot work it at once. Dividing the 4,800 sq ft by the 14 by 24 ft shared bay gives roughly 9 positions before circulation is deducted a second time for cross movement. Whether the plan keeps 9 or drops to 6 comes back to the question this footprint is really answering: what does storing forage next to machinery cost each of them?

Because 20 feet clears the 10 feet this platform treats as usable, the end of the run is a room rather than a gap: 1,200 square feet for a separation strip between the stacked end and the parked end that keeps chaff, dust and fuel apart. Cleaning, maintenance and inspection all need reach, and reach is planned in the gaps rather than in the modules.

The 4 feet of spare width runs the whole 80-foot length — 320 square feet of wall strip. It earns its keep as shelving, staging or a walking route, not as another shared bay. A building that cannot be reversed out of is a building that gets used in one direction only.

Seasonal peaks fall at different times, which is what makes the pairing work: the equipment end empties as the stack fills. The plan should be drawn against the week when both are full at once. 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 4,800-square-foot total, is what decides whether the leftover 20 feet is useful here.

Nominal bay division computes to 4 bays at about 20 feet, wider than the 14-foot module — so a position can sit inside a bay without a frame line splitting it. Noise from this floor reaches the office, the neighbours and the yard, and separation is a plan decision.

With 2 rows deep, the rear row is behind the front one. Without a route past it, those shared bays become storage positions rather than working ones — the real cost of depth at this width. Temperature swing on a steel shell drives condensation decisions that outrank most layout preferences.

Extension is cheapest along the 80 ft dimension, where each added bay repeats work already framed; widening past 60 ft is a different frame rather than a longer one. Growing to 60 by 104 adds a 4th run of shared bays — useful if the constraint is shared bays rather than the 8 ft already spare at the far end.

Configured as a shared building holding forage at one end and equipment at the other, 60x80 is judged on whether the 8 shared bays it holds match the operation, and on whether the 4 feet of spare width leaves the route this mode depends on.

• Does the work need four lanes across, or two lanes flanking an interior work hall, or does it need a second lane that this 60-foot span cannot give?
• Is the 80-foot length being bought for depth, or for the repeated bays — six to eight repeated bays, and the bay line becomes the organising device for the whole plan?
• 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?

The 60-foot gable can carry 4 openings, one per shared bay, with 4 feet of wall left for piers between and beside them — the arrangement that keeps each position independently reachable. Access, not area, is what makes a plan feel small once it is in use.

The 60 ft ends and the 80 ft sides offer very different opening budgets: 60 ft of end wall has room for one wide opening or two modest ones, while 80 ft of side wall can carry several without the openings competing. On this plan the deciding factor is whether mixed hay and equipment storage or use separation 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.

The stored configuration carries a 18-foot eave and computes to 28 feet at the ridge on a 4:12 pitch — a 10-foot rise across 60 feet. Height is therefore not uniform, and the sidewall is the constraint. The count of working positions, not the headline area, is the figure that survives contact with the operation.

The taller requirement wins and the other end lives with it. Where the equipment is tall and the stack is not, the extra volume over the stack is genuinely useful for air movement rather than wasted.

Ventilation across 4,800 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.

• 40x50 moves the count from 8 to 9 shared bays (3 across by 3 deep), which is the reason to choose between them.
• 30x70 holds the same 8 shared bays but changes the leftover depth by -14 feet, which is where the difference is actually felt.
• 36x60 moves the count from 8 to 9 shared bays (3 across by 3 deep), which is the reason to choose between them.

Because this footprint is planned as a shared building holding forage at one end and equipment at the other, the useful next reads are different from the ones a differently shaped hay barn suggests: mixed hay and equipment storage, use separation planning, seasonal peak planning.

No price appears on this page. The quantities that scale an estimate at 60x80 are 4,800 square feet of slab, 74.1 cubic yards of nominal concrete, 5,040 square feet of wall cladding and 5,060 square feet of roof cladding. Set the openings before the interior, because the openings cannot move and the interior can.

Any real separation — a wall, a fire-resisting construction, a drained bay — is what distinguishes this plan's estimate from a plain shed. What separation is required is determined for the specific building by the local authority.

• 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