Another milestone has been achieved. The new summer hen house has a roof, which means it is now ready for occupancy.
The roof has two layers. The under layer is mostly to keep light out so I made it out of scrap plywood of various widths. The unpainted surfaces were covered with the remainder of the green paint and some dark brown paint that accidentally got left in the garage over the winter.
After having been frozen, the paint texture is slightly finer than cottage cheese. It looks terrible until it has been spread around on the surface of the plywood. Fortunately, it flattens as it dries and gives reasonably good coverage. Even so, I wouldn’t use it on anything more aesthetically demanding than the inside of a hen house. The roof panels were turned dark-side-down and fastened to the base of the hen house.
Purlins were run across the roof to hold corrugated roofing panels, which will be the weatherproof surface of the hen house. The purlins are elevated above the under layer of the roof.
The purpose for that arrangement is to allow the air heated under the roof panels by the sunlight to convect to the roof peak and pull in cooler air at the lower edge as it leaves. It will be exciting to see if this innovation succeeds.
During our summers, there is 24-hour daylight. So, the hen house needs to shed heat efficiently. The birds need to be comfortable enough inside to spend the night in the dark interior. If the hen house were to become too warm, the hens might prefer to sleep outside in the sunlight and my efforts to maintain their day/night cycle would be for naught.
Once the wiggly strips were added across the purlins, the roof panels were attached and trimmed to length. The size of the roof was chosen so the cutoff pieces of roof panel can be used to cover the nest boxes that will eventually be attached to the front side of the hen house.
Now that the hen house is complete, I will begin enclosing the pen frame.
