Installing a ceiling fan in an outdoors building

Rather more expensive, but likely to be much more effective is:

Eek, that does look good but no way I could sneak that past hubby's wallet :o( He think's I'm daft wanting to spend 15 quid on one!

The shelter is open so that she can come and go as she pleases, so the netting wouldn't work. I had thought about putting a stranded netting type thing there that they could walk through, but they're worse than sheep - bound to hang themselves somehow!

Thanks for your reply though - much appreciated.

I misread that as you *are* a hevily pregnant mare .

It will move the air around a bit, but not actually cool it. For cooling, if you can get a ridge/apex vent to allow heat escape upwards, and reduce solar gain by whitewashing the outside of the roof, that may actually help. Using a "safari roof" of a second layer of wriggly tin spaced above the first might help even more.

Owain

There is ridge ventilation, kind of, in that apex sheet is slightly raised from the corrugated panels leading to the apex. I really don't think whitewashing the outside would go down well with planning - it's a lovely subtle forest green at the moment... and whilst we may look at insulating the roof in the future, it's not really an option at the moment.

Horses will start to sweat lightly as soon as they are too hot, and any airflow over them will help cool them very effectively. It will also keep the flies off, and if you saw the horseflies around here, you would understand my concern! I really want to stick with the fan idea in the short term - the heat and flies will only be a problem for this summer as I have another solution in place long term.

So do you think the ceiling fan idea would be safe?

Many thanks :o)

A fan is fine. I didnt follow your fixing plans, but as long as its solidly fixed, no prolbem.

One thing to be a bit wary of with these fans is that its very easy to underestimate the cooling effect at night, and wake up with muscles in a bad way as a result. Since the horses cant tell you about it or switch it down, this is especially an issue, so I'd be tempted to keep it to low speed only. On lowest speed, power consumptin is relatively low.

Hanging it on a metal rod to bring it down to 8' would help.

A car rad fan on 12v will run way too fast, and when slowed down sensibly would be too small to create anything but a small area of cooling effect.

NT

A fan is fine. I didnt follow your fixing plans, but as long as its solidly fixed, no prolbem.

One thing to be a bit wary of with these fans is that its very easy to underestimate the cooling effect at night, and wake up with muscles in a bad way as a result. Since the horses cant tell you about it or switch it down, this is especially an issue, so I'd be tempted to keep it to low speed only. On lowest speed, power consumptin is relatively low.

Hanging it on a metal rod to bring it down to 8' would help.

A car rad fan on 12v will run way too fast, and when slowed down sensibly would be too small to create anything but a small area of cooling effect.

NT

I didn't know horses sweat, but I'm not a horse person. Most animals covered in fur/hair don't sweat as it would cause their fur to become encrusted in salt, and the fur prevents air circulation near the skin so it wouldn't cool them either. Some specific body areas (ears, panting tounge) are used for cooling in this case. What I'm saying is don't take for granted that a light breeze will be as comforting/cool to a horse as it is to a person. It might even be that blowing the hot air down from the roof would make things worse for an animal, even though it works for a human. However, like I said, I don't know horses. (Last week I passed a field of horses which all had coats on. This looked strange in the heat, but if horses don't cool themselves by evaporation of sweat from the skin, then the coats won't be restricting their temperature regulation.)

I think I might look for a wall mount fan (some of the desk fans can be wall mounted). Don't have it oscillating, but just point in one area, leaving another area out of the draft so the horse can chose.

I'll mention again something I usually bring up when someone mentions electricity near livestock. Most animals are much more susceptable to electrocution than humans and can be electrocuted by leakage currents you can barely detect, which can generate fatal potentials across the ground between their legs, and they can't let go of the ground. Wiring up an electricity supply to such an area should be undertaken by an electrician specifically familiar with livestock installations.

The field is just outside the house, so I'd only ever switch it on on hot days, and it wouldn't ever be on at night. The horses are free to roam the field and field shelter as they wish, but tend to come into the field shelter of their own accord to escape the sun and flies. Actually, just occurred to me that I could fit an isolator for the fan near the consumer unit and only turn the circuit on on hot days - reduces risk of damp causing shorts.

My horses are 6' at the shoulder, so that would probably take their ears off! However, that does make me think that fixing a wire mesh underneath the fan might be a good idea. Horses really are suicidal and exist to think up new ways of killing themselves...

Thank you, that's really useful to know - saves me wasting time looking at them on ebay!

Thank you very much for your help :)

Or use a thermostat.

I would think a horse (maybe not a pregnant one) could reach 8' heigh with a good kick.

Owain

Horses sweat massively. It's very common to have to add electrolytes to their water after a hard ride as they've lost so much salt in the pints of sweat that they will have lost. A summer coat on a horse is similar to velvet - only a couple of mm long, so the sweat won't cake on them. A winter coat on a horse could be an inch long on the other hand. Horses don't pant, lol! The horses you saw in the field almost certainly had fly rugs on to protect them from biting insects. Last year in that very hot summer that we had, I had a fly rug on my horse, and he would come to the gate asking for me to pour cold water over him from a watering can. This saturated the rug which allowed him to cool as it evaporated.

Fans in posh stables are commonplace, but posh stables are drier than my field shelter and don't suffer from condensation. However, the concept is proven.

The horses can choose to leave the field shelter at any point, and wander around the field instead. Maybe a wall mounted fan would do the job, probably easier to set up, but I would have to make it horse proof. I was looking at the tower fans - I haven't seen them in action, but maybe one of them in the corner of the shelter would be good. I could fix a mesh panel diagonally across the corner with the fan behind it... ah, that wouldn't work cos the mare would probably pee on it and electrocute herself. From that point of view then, it would need to be at least 6' high...

I actually wasn't aware of that! What's the usual RCD detection limit,

Far too high; 30mA doesn't even guarantee protection from electrocution for humans. You may be looking at 10mA or lower to get the disconnection times down, as well as special bonding measures such as an earthed and bonded metal grid in the floor. Getting that to work without false tripping in a damp environment requires a very high standard of wiring. Each installation will require design and calculation in accordance with S. 605 of the Regulations which have different tables and values from the rest of the Regs.

As Andrew said, it really needs an electrician specifically familiar with the risks involved. Otherwise it's horseburgers on the barbie this summer.

Owain

Thanks, very interesting.

I'm not an electrician specifically familiar with livestock installations. I just know enough to know that I don't know this area. I could make lots of reasoned guesses but you really need someone with relevant knowledge.

You can get 10mA RCD's and they are for restrictive conductive locations, i.e. when your movement is restricted in a conductive location, and you may not be able to let go (e.g. working inside a pipeline or boiler). A horse is in this situation in so far as it has no way to let go of the ground. However, I don't know that this is good enough by itself. Things like positioning of earth rods (or using earth tapes) might be very important too.

Thank you both. I'm now suitably terrified of running 240v anywhere near my horses and am going to scrap the mains installation plans and stick to my

I really appreciate everyone who has shared their knowledge and experience on this topic.

Wireless CCTV (may not work in metal roofed building) is feasible to run off dry batteries if you don't mind frequent recharging.

Owain

I don't share the concerns on this that others have, this is a high height fixed installation, the wiring can be run in a position that the horses cannot possibly come into contact with and could be further protected by the use of plastic conduit.

Also, the fan you showed appears to be a Micromark branded one which has an earth, in the event of moisture ingress, leakage will follow the easiest path to earth which will be to the copper earth conductor rather than through the building structure although an earth spike will probably be necessary.

Provided the cabling is carried out sensibly and an RCCB of any reasonable trip rating is used, it appears to be a non-issue. Note I'm not saying that any human protecting RCCB is sufficient to protect a horse, I'm saying that with earthed equipment any leakage will be diverted to earth and a trip occur before a significant risk current could flow through the building and reach the horse.

BTW: the Micromark fans are pretty naff and on/off and speed control via those dangling chains, these ones from CPC may be a better bet as the controls can be put on the cable and there are extra shafts to vary the height:

Fan 36":

Is =A314.99 the top end of your budget?

I think a reasonable setup would cost (draws air through teeth...) =A340 or =A350

cheers, Pete.

I like those fans - much better than the one I was looking at. I prefer the control box as well as I was concerned that the horses would be trying to eat the dangly cords. I think I've gone off the idea of running 240v to the field shelter though. It was always going to be a bit of a PITA as the field is the opposite side of next-door's access lane, so would have been a catenary wire job, and with the winds we get up here, I was always slightly dubious that the field shelter would take off and snap the cable.

We have a large weatherproof barn that the horses use most of the time, but it gets used as a games room for our summer guests during the summer holidays, which is when Jess is due to drop her foal (and hence is most likely to suffer from the heat). However, we're going to keep it for the horses after this summer, so may look at installing a fan up there in future. There's a massive high ceiling on that barn so no danger of horses coming anywhere near the leccy.

Thanks for your advice Fred :)

this:

When I first read that. I thought you meant the wife. And spent a few minutes wondering why you kept her ouside. Then I re-read it and realised my mistake.

A.

In article , xena writes

Good luck whatever you try in the end.

FYI, big fans turning slowly seem to be best at keeping comfort level up and noise down. In summer the trick is to push air up as cooler air is nearest the ground and to get effective movement at ground/horsey level the fans don't want to be too high.

HTH