October 27, 2011

DUTCH MASTERS CONSTRUCTION SERVICES LTD.

Georbon Farm in Inglewood, Ont., features a 12-stall barn, track room and staff apartments.

FEATURE | General and Trades Contracting

Dutch Masters Construction of Barrie, Ontario specializes only in horse barns

PETER KENTER

correspondent

“When you put a $2-million addition on a public school or a sewage plant, there’s often a ceremony with the mayor in attendance,” says Gary Van Bolderen, principal of Dutch Masters Construction Services Ltd. in Barrie, a general contracting firm specializing in horse barns. “When you’ve just completed construction of a $2-million horse barn, nobody knows about it except you, the owners and a few of their friends.”

Van Bolderen grew up on a farm on the Niagara Peninsula where he rode horses bareback. He recalls working for a company in Kitchener, Ont. where he completed a large number of horse-related construction projects. He was told then that one simply couldn’t base a business on building horse barns.

“I told them that it wasn’t my fault that the calls kept coming,” he says.

Van Bolderen established his own company in 1990 as a contracting firm providing consulting, custom design, project management and construction services exclusively to the horse industry. He is also president of the Canadian Farm Builders Association, an Ontario association representing about 350 members, including, engineers, suppliers, inspectors and government members.

Gary Van Bolderen, above, says farm building is a small industry niche.

“The farm building industry is a small niche within the construction industry, and horse barns are a small industry within that industry,” says Van Bolderen. “Don’t ask me to design a dairy or hog barn, I do horse barns exclusively. There are maybe five or six companies in Ontario that specialize in these sectors.”

The company employs a permanent staff of two designers and maintains relations with a close-knit team of subcontractors, including builders, masons, roofers, landscapers, electricians and HVAC specialists. The company completes two to three large projects per year and may employ as many as 30 tradespeople at a time. Most of the buildings are wood-framed with occasional demand for steel-framed construction.

Dutch Masters has built barns throughout Ontario and designed them for clients as far away as Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and the United States.

The barns are built around the realities of keeping horses, which include their safety, health and care. Accommodating those needs can result in anything ranging from a simple structure to a 40,000 square-foot, $3-million air-conditioned equestrian palace featuring fieldstone paths, stuccoed walls, slate roof tiles and ceramic floors, with bathrooms, showers, kitchens, fireplaces and a heated arena with climate-controlled spectator seating.

Van Bolderen notes that Ontario’s horse population continues to climb as equestrian culture increases in popularity.

The most demanding part of building an equestrian facility, however, is obtaining environmental clearances and permits, he says. That includes multiple levels of environmental assessments and compliance, setbacks from water courses, well planning, storm water management plans, nutrient management strategies and other regulatory criteria.

The design of the facility, of course, keeps horse residents top of mind.

“The health and safety of the horses is paramount,” says Van Bolderen. “That ranges from small details such as making sure there are no sharp edges or latches where they walk, to ensuring that the building is properly ventilated of methane gas, ammonia, moisture and dust, since respiratory diseases are the biggest threat to a horse’s health.”

The ventilation system must work to complement not only the facility’s heating and cooling system, but the feeding system and manure disposal system as well.

Even the indoor arenas must be carefully engineered to ensure that dust is kept to a minimum.

“If you used traditional dirt on the floor of an arena, you literally wouldn’t be able to see the other side of the building,” says Van Bolderen. “The arena floor is made of compacted aggregate and then overlaid with a material composed of wax, sand, rubber fibre and dust suppressants, so when the horses walk across the surface, it provides the proper support.”

While completing a construction project provides a sense of satisfaction, Van Bolderen says he loves to see the properties a year or two following hand-over, after sod, trees and foliage have grown in.

“There’s nothing quite like seeing the owners with the farm in full operation,” he says. “They grow more beautiful over the years.”

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