Over the past few days I, and my friends Paul and Charles, built a green-roof chicken coop in preparation for the chicken raising that will be going on in my yard this spring.  I’ll be ordering three or four day-old chicks when they become available in February.  We can hardly wait.

I researched and designed the coop months ago, but had been waiting for classes to let out for winter break to build, then for the holidays to pass.  This left me nothing to do but pour over the designs again and again, staring at them with nothing left to tweak as a poor substitute for construction.  (I have included the plans and materials list I used to build the coop — construction documents they are not, as my wife, skilled in AutoCAD, noted.  I am happy to explain the plans to anyone looking to build from or modify this design.  She has promised to render the plans in AutoCAD for a future post.)

Researching green roof construction proved interesting.  There seems to be some consensus on the layers required to make a functional living roof, but a lot of variation exists in the materials used.  Beyond ensuring the structure can hold the added weight of wet soil and biomass, the concern turns to moisture control and drainage — keeping the water off the wood.  This is where the layers come in.  I started by covering the plywood with 3M Flashing Tape, then covered that with this sticky, tar-backed U.S. Seal Instant Waterproof Tape.  For drainage, I used a Tuftex PVC Panel, which is ribbed and will direct excess water off the roof.  It will also serve as a root barrier keeping the plants from burrowing into the wood.  Atop this I placed two layers of burlap to keep the soil from sloughing off down the drainage channels: Water can easily penetrate this layer, so the plants won’t drown, but the soil should mostly stay in place.

All that’s left is planting.

We chose to incorporate a living roof into the design because it gets so hot here in the summer, and the insulating properties of the roof will help keep our chickens cool.  And it’s more space to grow edibles — for us and the chickens.

The coop took one full day of prep (buying materials, cutting, staining), one full day of building (framing, siding, chicken wire), and a half day of tinkering and fine tuning (hinges, latches, nest boxes, green-roof layers).  Definitely a three-person job, especially when stretching and stapling the chicken wire, which tends to lacerate and stab like dried-out bougainvillea.  But, overall, a smooth build for three suburbanites with zero farm-type construction experience between them.

It went together like I planned, and it looks like I imagined — success.

So, I guess we better get some chicks.