This chicken coop has taken me a long time to build. Correction: the materials for this chicken coop have taken a long time to find; hands on building time was pretty easy! Sadly the ‘foraged’ trailer that made the super-coop mobile was reclaimed by its owner and the coop is now more of a static caravan than a mobile home.
The Roof:
In anticipation of the green roof, I wanted to make a pretty strong structure. I used five roof supports with birdsmouth cuts and a strong central timber to take the weight. You can see I finally got to use my maths A-level skills for something other than passing an exam.
Once again, the main problem I came across was using reclaimed wood. Some of the strips were warped or split or broken.
The Green Roof:
Google told me that the layers of a green roof are very important.
1. The base structure – must be strong, wet planting medium is very heavy.
2. Waterproof layer – I used a tarp.
3. Drainage layer – this can be expensive to buy so I drank over 6,000 bottles of wine and kept the corks to save money.
4. Root membrane layer – I used a membrane made from recycled plastic bottles.
5. Water retention layer – I used fleece to hold in water for the thin soil.
6. Soil medium – I used pine nuggets and sphagnum moss.
7. The plants – I have creeping thyme seedling ready to transplant…
Awesome post Chris
If you will please pardon my language: your chicken coop is seriously bad-assed!! I just finished my own much more modest chicken tractor and was feeling pretty clever about how I went about designing it. I see I have a good bit further to go in the clever department to be as clever as you. Happy egging!
It’s more of a hodge-podge of broken down pallets and scraps of wood and a gazillion screws than a master design, but I thank you for your kind comments. I’m sad it’s not on wheels anymore because I was going to roll it around the garden (I’m now on the constant look out for new wheels!). Did you work out when to harvest your potatoes because I’m equally confused?!
Ya know… I’m going to take them before the last of the leaves die back to the ground. Even if the potatoes turn out to be smaller than usual, at least I’ll find potatoes under the straw rather than puddled slime <– my suspicion…
I think I have puddled slime too. Too much rain here in western NC…
I went ahead and dug the spuds. They were quite small… and the blue ones were struggling with a bit of scab, but are still on this side of edible. But a bushel of small spuds grown from 8 seed potatoes ain’t half bad, considering what I could have found under the ground. The slug load was a SHOCK! Can’t wait for the new pullets to arrive (Sunday)…They’ll sort the slugs out in short order.
Dig and see what you’ve got under there… maybe you’ll be as lucky? Cheers!