# Damp Barn (Dirt) Floor Whenever It Rains



## lucyp (Jan 30, 2011)

Whenever it rains, my barn floor becomes damp. Downright soggy in some spots. The rain is not getting in through the roof or other doors; it is just coming up from the ground being saturated. I would shrug and think it was due to the thaw, but the ground has dried, and it keeps happening with each rain. I really cannot concrete the area, but I would be able to do a blend or put down sand or gravel. Any ideas on what would work best and maybe what can be done in the short term to deal with this? With spring coming, it will only get worse.


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## julieq (Oct 12, 2008)

If you've got animals standing on it, I sure wouldn't use concrete. We put down rubber horse stall mats and they work wonderfully well in our 100 year old vintage dairy barn. Although we didn't, you can certainly put down some gravel or sand under the mats.


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## nehimama (Jun 18, 2005)

Sounds kinda like my place. Both my barns are downhill. Heck, EVERYTHING here is downhill. Last year a friend of mine found a barn being torn down, and was able to get the old, oak flooring sections free! Those took care of my constantly damp barn floors. If that hadn't come along, I was next going to lay down pallets and top with plywood - however many pallets and sheets of plywood it took - just to get the goats up off that damp (wet) dirt floor!


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## BackfourtyMI. (Sep 3, 2007)

Our barn is also down hill here too, I admit we didn't think far enough ahead when we did that but we had gutters put on the barn & run the big black pipe off the downspouts away from the barn, that helped alot.
In the barn I have always had pallets topped with plywood for the goats to use for bedding areas & that has always worked well.
It does stay really dry now, only dampness I see is when it thaws this time of year I see it seep in by the door & around the edges, not actually water but the dirt looks damp.


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## lucyp (Jan 30, 2011)

Thanks for the ideas. I will check into them. My barn is at the top of the hill, but the ground gets crazy saturated even up at the top. Go figure. I have some shelves that they lay on when it's warm enough, but pallets covered with ply would be a good place to put down some straw for them when it's colder.


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## Alice In TX/MO (May 10, 2002)

You must look at what the slope is outside the barn, what the dirt up next to the barn is sloped like, and where the run off from the roof goes.

Many factors.


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## medic (Dec 8, 2010)

Try a frenchdrain


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## LFRJ (Dec 1, 2006)

Yeppers! Drains. We deal with water, constantly in our parts. You can't fight it, but you can navigate its path! After that issue has been dealt with, I'd say gravel to stiffen things up a bit, and then maybe pallets or some sort of raised platform to keep the animals out of contact with the water? I always look at standing water as a cesspool of bacteria (depending on the temp), so I don't like it hanging around.


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## motdaugrnds (Jul 3, 2002)

If I had your situation to deal with, I would examine the grade of the land "outside" the barn to make sure "run-off" water is not headed toward my barn. Then I would check the roof "drainage" to make sure it will travel away from my barn. If these are such that they are not problematic, I would move the goats to another location for as long as it took for me to fix that mud problem.

I would make the assumption the water coming up into the barn was coming from an area I could "not" fix; so I would look for ways to "control" where it stopped, making sure it would not be my barn floor! This means I would probably start digging trenches and laying drain pipes (with holes) and plenty of #57 gravel. I would want these trenches & pipes to slant down and away out from under my barn floor. After this is done, I would lay down some geotextile, layer rocks/dirt/crushed run/ more dirt and top it with a mixture of agricultural lime and sawdust. Oh yes, this would entail a lot of hard work! 

I would prefer to do that hard work rather than cover the mud with pallets & plywood simply because I would not want snakes or whatever living under that type of bedding.


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