Adding Heat to Your Barn's Tack Room

Adding heat to your barn’s tack room could give you a warm haven when doing horse chores on cold winter days. We asked Heather Lewis, AIA, NCARB, AAA, a principle of Animal Arts architecture firm, about adding heat safely to your tack room without running the risk of a barn fire.

Lewis has traveled around the world designing equine, veterinary, and small animal facilities and shelters. She is a member of the Fear Free advisory board and the author of the Fear Free standards for veterinary hospital design.

Read on for tips on adding heat to your barn’s tack room!

Add Heat to Your Tack Room With Caution

Heating a tack room requires some caution. For a small space such as a tack room, a portable (space) heater is the only reasonable, low-cost option. A space heater can be used safely, but you’ll need to have strict guidelines for its purchase and operation.

Get a low-profile heater that:

has a built-in thermostat so it will shut off when the space reaches a certain temperature;
has an automatic safety overheating shutoff (it will shut off before overheating);
has an automatic tip shutoff (it will shut off automatically if tipped over); and
has a cover over the heating elements in addition to a low profile so it’s less likely to tip over.

Tips for Safe Operation of a Tack Room Heater

For safe operation of a heater in a tack room, we recommend the following:

The heater must be placed in a specific, dedicated space in the tack room.
Nothing should be placed within three feet of the heater. Attach brightly colored tape on the floor around the heater and post a sign explaining that for everyone’s safety, the heater must stay within the taped boundary.
Always plug the heater directly into a wall outlet and never use an extension cord. If you don’t have a wall outlet in the location where the heater will be placed, have one installed.
Keep the floor clean in the tack room.
Post a sign asking your family or boarders to shut off the heater when they leave.

If your family or boarders do not follow the safety guidelines for the heater, then remove it. But we bet they will follow the guidelines in order to have a place to warm up on cold days!

For further information, visit this Energy.gov link: https://energy.gov/energysaver/portable-heaters.