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Cooling Horses
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Equine Facilities: Two Problems, One Solution Big Ass Fans Beat the Heat, Eliminate Condensation
People feel the heat and so do horses. Heat can, in fact, affect a horse’s health and well-being a lot more than it does us humans. After all, we just move into a comfortably air-conditioned room when
we get too hot. Most horses don’t have that luxury. It is impractical and expensive to air-condition most horse barns.
Heat stress in horses can cause weight loss, high body temperatures, low performance expectations, and dramatic water intake. Also associated with heat stress is some horses’ inability to sweat,
despite an elevated body temperature. This condition, called anhidrosis, can be life threatening.
Ronnie Kent of Chipley, Florida understands this about horses, and understands the need to keep his mounts
comfortable and healthy. That’s why he’d been looking for a solution to keeping his horses cool ever since he erected his metal horse barn five years ago.
For four of those five years, Kent kept air
moving with eight box fans and two floor fans. It wasn’t until a year ago that he discovered a better solution. That solution was rotating slowly above his head at
MetalCon, the convention of metal building professionals.
The fan was, at 24 feet in diameter, one Big Ass fan. Literally, the Big Ass Fan Company, out of
Lexington, Kentucky, makes the ten bladed, hollow-core aluminum airfoil fans. The fans range in diameter from 6 feet to 24 feet and are used in a variety of applications – industrial, manufacturing,
warehousing, commercial, and in dairy barns across the country.
Kent was so impressed by the volume of air created by the slow-turning fan blades that he ordered
one for his horse barn. “I thought it would be ideal for the horses,” says Kent. “It just made sense.”
Kent knew that fans are one of the most effective ways to cool the body. A cool body is key to
reducing heat stress, which occurs when the core temperature rises beyond safe limits. Fans work on both the horse and human natural cooling system.
When sweat evaporates, it feels cooler. Fans help speed up the evaporation process.
Slow-moving fans also reduce the amount of moisture in the air. This reduction in humidity makes
the environment seem cooler.
Dairy farm owners have found this approach useful in keeping their herds cool in summer. Dairy
barns usually vent heat through the roof. For many dairy farmers, Big Ass fans also pull in air through the ridge vent, washing cattle with fresh air from outside the barn. Big Ass fans can eliminate
12 – 13 standard alley fans.
With the installation of just one Big Ass Fan, Kent was able to eliminate the box and floor fans he’d been using. “That one fan is all we need,
” he says. “It’s like having a cool breeze in here all summer long.”
A Big Ass Fan works on the principle of convection currents. Unlike high velocity fans, the big fan
slowly rotates and generates a downward column of air equal to the fan’s diameter. As the column hits the floor, it slides outward toward the walls. There, it moves up to the ceiling and then back
down through the fan blades, gaining momentum as it goes. Since the fans are made of lightweight aluminum and move slowly, they operate on a one or one-and-a-half horsepower motor. This
results in significant energy savings.
Kent was so impressed with the Big Ass Fan, he placed another fourteen footer in his business – a
7500 sq. ft. sheet metal shop. “They’re fine fans,” he says.
Jason Riley would agree with Ronnie Kent. Riley is project engineer at Riverbend Ranch in Idaho Falls,
Idaho. Frank and Belinda VanderSloot own the ranch where they raise premiere Black Angus cattle. They’re also passionate about horses, and have a combination stable and riding arena, a building that
covers 55,000 square feet, with 32,000 s.f. dedicated to the arena.
The VanderSloots don’t have the same problem as Ronnie Kent, but they do have one typical of many
metal horse facilities – condensation forming on the roof of the building in winter. As the project engineer, it was Jason Riley’s job to fix the facility’s internal climate problem.
I knew we had to do something to control ventilation because that’s the best way to control condensation.” You want to keep the temperature differential down.” In wintertime, warm air rises
and hits the metal roof where moisture is taken out of the air by the colder temperature of the ceiling. In some indoor environments, it can seem like it’s raining inside.
“I had to do something to control the ventilation. We didn’t want to put in spiral ductwork. We
wanted a nice, clean refined look.” Riley worked with Industrial Ventilation, Inc. of Nampa ID, a Big Ass Fan distributor, to achieve that look.
“It just made sense to me,” he says. “If I was to use any other type of ceiling fans, we determined
that we’d need at least twenty-seven of the commercial grade ceiling fans. We solved our problem with three of the Big Ass Fans.”
The secret to controlling condensate is air
temperature and airflow, especially near the condensing surfaces. Riley says that for the Riverbend riding facility, the Big Ass fans do the job beautifully. “The fans push air down to the
floor and it rises back up against the walls. You can feel the breeze it generates at top speed, but we only have to run them at half speed.”
“That’s the nice thing about the fans,” he
continues. “They have infinite control from nothing at all to fifty-nine hertz. We run ours at 35 hertz, about half speed. That’s enough to keep the air moving from October to April when we
need it most.” The facility uses three twenty-four foot fans, and has one more on the way to control
a bigger condensation problem on the east wall. “We’ll have to run that one a little faster, I think, but
that’s what it’s all about – managing air flow through the fans. “The fans are doing the job,” says
Riley, “and they’re doing it well.” And who knows, maybe horses do appreciate it after all. 
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