Small Horse Barn Costs To Build

When we wanted to build a small horse barn, we had no idea how much it would cost to build. Your land, farm needs, and location will all impact the horse barn cost. However, here the rough costs to build our metal horse barn (pole barn).

How much does it cost to build a horse barn?

For a complete 3-stall horse barn, it cost us around $66,000 to build. However, that does not include our electric horse fence ($16,000), arena, arena lights, etc. 

Additional Information

3-Stall Horse Barn Cost

Our barn builder managed the construction of the entire structure, stalls, tack room, and concrete floor. By structure, I mean the poles, wood framing, and metal exterior – plus the labor to put everything together. The poured concrete floor was between $4 and $6 per square foot.

We were originally quoted around $39,000 for this portion, but late in 2020 lumber prices rose and the price changed to $46,600.

You may be able to lower the price if you don’t want the dutch doors. The stall dutch doors were around $1000 or $1500 each, and the Dutch-style front doors were around $4500 and custom ordered. If you go with simple metal/wood sliders, your cost will be significantly less.

The back doors to the barn are the same size as the front doors, and only cost around $800 instead of $4500. This is why we only have them on one side.

Barn Site Prep Cost:

Crushed asphalt as a final layer before concrete and stall material.

Starting with a solid foundation is an important step. Without a proper foundation, your barn may have issues like flooding, floor cracking/settling, etc. We have an entire post on the footing/foundation. To summarize, we removed the sod layer, added fill sand to level and raise the area, and added crushed asphalt to the top.

The $7,125 includes all the labor, plus materials, including $2,600 in materials (sand, crushed asphalt, limestone to be used in the stall area after construction).

Barn Site Finish Cost:

After the structure is up, you may want to level out the area (if the barn is raised) and apply any top layer for appearance and durability purposes. We chose limestone, which is relatively expensive. ($2,500 of the $3,900 was the limestone alone)

Barn Water Cost:

Connecting our barn to our house water (private well) was a fair amount of work. The length was 225 feet, which is long enough that one needs to start worrying about friction in the line affecting water pressure. To combat this, the pump/line company 1” poly pipe.

Trenching and pipe laying was around $10/ft, plus hydrants at $225/ea, and they also completed the installation of the watering post (bought separately for $500 from The Drinking Post).

Since we’re in Michigan, our frost-free depth is beyond 42 inches or lower, so a relatively serious (riding) trencher was necessary.

Barn Electricity Cost:

We were lucky that a friend and neighbor is also a licensed electrician. We purchased almost all of the necessary components and he provided the labor. Most electricians charge between $50 and $100 per hour and we were in that range.

Because of the length (over 200 ft) we had to worry about voltage drop. For long runs, you need larger cables in order to combat this drop. We were lucky that we have 400 AMP service coming into our house, so we were able to split off 100 AMP service for the barn. There was a fair amount of wiring needed from the box just to the exterior of our house, then from the house to the barn. It was around $600 in wire alone from the house system to the barn.

Inside the barn, we needed the electrical box, wire, breakers, etc. $800. We also used interior and exterior light fixtures ($1120).

For electrical labor, I think we were around $1000 to $1250 for this portion. Some of the lights (interior floods, porch lights) I was able to install myself and just had the electrician run the wiring and set up the junction boxes.

Would you be interested in any further breakdowns of cost/details for water, electricity, or lighting? Drop us a line and let us know.