PVC Strip Doors for Stalls

I love that my horses can go in and out of their stalls at will, but one problem with having the Dutch doors open all the time is that rain and snow sometimes blow in. If I had shelled out for a real overhang on that side of the barn (major regret!), that might not be a problem. But the overhang is only a few inches and adding one now would be a huge, expensive project so I looked for an alternative and found out about PVC strip doors. You may have seen them in warehouses or walk-in freezers.

Purchase and Installation

I purchased "PVC stip doors" from Hoover Fence. It cost $145.53 for the mounting hardware and enough strips to cover each 4' wide doorway. The strips have little holes at the top that you use to hang them from the mounting bracket. It only takes a step stool and a few minutes to put them on or take them off. When you first get them, you trim them to fit the height of your doorway (a pair of sharp scissors works just fine, no need to mess with utility knives). I made sure to cut mine just short enough that a horse couldn't step on a trailing end and rip the whole thing down. You should install them so that they overlap each other a little bit.

Acclimation

Since my horses had never experienced strip doors before, I acclimated them to the strips slowly. I added once to each side first so their barrels would just brush against the strips. I led them in and out of their stalls a few times to make sure no one was going to freak out. After a few days I increased it to two on each side and then three. That left only a small gap in the middle that they could stick their noses through (as you can see in the first picture below). After a few more days I added the final strip so that they had to actively part the strips with their noses. My horses never showed any anxiety about the strips, even the very-cautious donkey who took months to decide the Bar Bar A waterer was safe to use, and I probably could have put them all up in just a day or two if I had wanted.

R sticks his head through the gap in the strips that I've left to acclimate him to walking through him.

Even the donkey, who is super cautious about new things, figured out the strips pretty quickly. (Pardon the poo, but that nose was too cute to not photograph!)

Rain-proofing

You can see in the photos below how the strips reduce the amount of rain blown into the bedding (this photo isn't super-dramatic but there's definitely a difference, I swear. If it's super windy and the rain is blowing sideways from east to west (my stalls face east), some rain might come in, but nowhere near as much as when the strips aren't there.

You can kind of see the darker bedding that got wet when the rain blew in.

With the strips installed, the bedding is totally dry.

Insulation

One benefit I hadn't given much thought to was keeping the stalls a little warmer in the winter. Horses handle cold very well and my part of the country (the mid-Atlantic area) doesn't get cold enough to be a problem, but frozen water buckets and things like that are a pain. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the strips make a significant difference in the amount of ice in stall water buckets after a cold night.

I removed some of the strips from one stall as an experiment. The bucket on the left came from a stall only half-enclosed with PVC strips. The bucket on the right came from one fully enclosed. You can see a big difference in the amount of ice in the buckets.

Bird-proofing

I have had issues with undesirable birds like starlings trying to nest in my barn every spring, so it occurred to me that the strips might help with this too. My aisle and aisle windows are not screened off in any way, so birds can still get into the barn and I have seen them fly around the stalls looking for a way out, unable to get through the strips. If you have a major bird problem and want to enclose all of your doors and windows, PVC strips could be part of that plan.

A few times I have seen undesirables like horseflies and wasps trapped inside the stalls though, and unlike birds they're not generally smart enough to seek another way out, so that's one thing to consider.

Summer

The first full year I had the strips, I found that they were not advantageous in the warmer months. Not only do they occasionally trap unpleasant insects inside the stalls, but they also block the breeze. So, I typically put them up in the fall and take them down in early summer, when I start to feel like they're making the stalls stuffy. I do wish I had them up sometimes during summer thunderstorm season, especially when the rain blows sideways and soaks a large portion of the stall!

Cleaning and Storage

The strips do get grungy over time from the horses walking in and out (especially if you have a dusty donkey--it cracks me up to see the strips for his door totally clean at the top and filthy at the bottom 3 feet). Also, if you take them down for part of the year you'll want to clean them before you put them away.

The good news is that cleaning them is easy. Because I make all my purchase decisions based on Amazon reviews 😇, I bought a bottle of Meguiar's vinyl cleaner. I drape the strips over the fence of my wash rack, wet them down with the hose, don some rubber gloves, and turn the strips transparent again. One spritz of Meguiar's goes a long way, and it allows you to easily wipe off most of the grunge. I think one bottle will last quite a few years.

Hopefully I don't need to tell you which side is before and which is after!

You don't want to fold the strips up for storage because they will develop creases where they're bent. Once mine have dried in the sun, I roll them up and put them in a box in the garage until fall. (Note: a box containing strips for three stalls is surprisingly heavy!) I try to hang them up again before winter sets in because if it's too cold, the ends of the strips tend to stay curled.