Ok no heat, but would you insulate a stall?

[AlpineSummit]

I get it, I get it - No heat and plenty of ventilation at the top.
12x9 stall with walls that don’t touch the ceiling - 3” gap results. So plenty of ventilation there. Drafty door, very drafty shutters, you get the idea.

But the stall also has double walls and would be easy to insulate w spray foam - 3 of the walls anyway. The 4th would not be insulated at all.

Anyway, how does that sound? Does anyone use an insulated stable?

Thanks,,,learning here!

 

[Maryann at MiniV]

The barn we have now came with our property and is also PARTIALLY insulated. Yes, it DOES make a difference, especially if you are night time stalling with water buckets. As for the horses? As long as they are in full winter coat, out of the wind, and there's no snow/hail/rain falling on them -- they won't care. LOL.

 

[Taz]

I have an uninsulated cement block barn with a 7' high insulated ceiling with 7 full sized horses, 2 standard donkeys and 3 minis in it. They can keep it above freezing( all of them in at night and out during the day with the barn kept closed) until the temperature gets down to about -5C during the day and -10-12C at night. Any colder than that and I have to heat it up after they go out in the morning to unfreeze the water hose. If you put plastic around the top of your walls as well as insulate the walls, it sounds like you already have lots of ventilation from the door etc, they might be able to warm it up in there unless it was really cold. I was renting a fully insulated barn before I was here and it had an extractor fan on the ceiling that could only be turned down low, not off. With 20 full sized horses in at night it had to have heaters going 24/7 to keep it above freezing, I think the gaps you have at the top of your walls will let all the heat out.

 

[AlpineSummit]

As it turns out I did insulate 3 walls of the barn - the 4th being an internal wall that separates the building into 2 stalls. 7' walls are insulated & dbl walled to about 5' high with the very top 6" of the walls open to the air. And of course a roof which now has a gutter to help keep the entrance ice free and just to make the entrance more pleasant to use. It surely makes a difference and for good measure I put a section of stockade fence close to the entrance to block the south wind; it is very windy here as we stick out into lake Champlain about 1 mile here. Definitely an improvement and I imagine that the heated water doesn't help much but certainly doesn't hurt any.