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I've googled and searched about this to no avail. I've thought of converting an old 300-500 ft. chicken house into a home. I wouldn't want to convert the whole thing, just one end or part of the middle section.
Has anyone done this or know someone who has?
It seems one would have to sure up the foundation and pour in a concrete slab where you wanted the alternative living space to be. Of course the rest of the structure would have to be sure as well because it is connected to the living quarters.
The chicken house I have in mind was probably built in the 1970's and is the old type with full length of the house curtains. It was repaired a bit a few years back to be used for storage and for drying tobacco.
One plus to using a poultry house is that they already have water and electricity ran to them.
Go to you local building department and see what building codes will need to be followed, Follow those codes. If using as a temp farm house for short period and not as a main house, you may have different rules to follow. I have a barn, but with a legal caretaker apartment. I didn;t have to do all the same things as a regular house, but did have to bring some thing up to building, fire and health codes. But 2 counties away, they have a different set of rules so it's all depending on your town or county what you can do.
Now if doing this on the sly without it being legal, a good general contractor or local person with skills in structures should be able to tell you what you need to do to make it safe based on what you have. hard to tell what you need to do without seeing the place.
I wouldn't. Chickens can have pests and arsenic compounds and other highly toxic insecticides were commonly used for many years. You might be able to encapsulate, a lot of it may have leached away, but it just doesn't make sense to me except for very temporary living (without kids).
Ditto. A chicken house sounds like a terrible place to build a living space for people. I'm down with converted barns, but I don't think I'd even build a house over a place where a chicken house used to be unless there was a lot of landscaping going on.
Maybe more responses in "frugal living" - one end or just the middle of a 300 sq. ft. building in my mind would be roughly 100 sq. ft. and I'm not sure if with a coat rack and a bed that would leave enough room for a bunsen burner and frying pan to cook your eggs.
Maybe more responses in "frugal living" - one end or just the middle of a 300 sq. ft. building in my mind would be roughly 100 sq. ft. and I'm not sure if with a coat rack and a bed that would leave enough room for a bunsen burner and frying pan to cook your eggs.
This isn't a chicken coop. Its a 300 foot long commercial chicken house, maybe 9,000 - 15,000 give or take square feet total.
Thank you all for the input. I haven't thought of chemical stuff being a problem. I wander if there is a way to test for that.
This isn't a chicken coop. Its a 300 foot long commercial chicken house, maybe 9,000 - 15,000 give or take square feet total.
Thank you all for the input. I haven't thought of chemical stuff being a problem. I wander if there is a way to test for that.
Sorry for the sarcasm - I seriously imagined a personal chicken coop with little more than a bed in it - not a 300 ft LONG structure - anyway good luck, and I hope it works. I like seeing people find new uses for things that may otherwise get torn down while other structures have to get erected at the same time.
I would wonder about getting the smell out of the barn. My dad had chickens and it seems to me that the walls get permeated with the smell.
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