Pole barn

New project started.
30x40x14 pole barn, not as big or elaborate as I wanted but will be better than nothing.
Ridge line will be running east/west with two 11x12 O/H doors on the south side and a man door on each gable end. At some point in the future I might add another 30-40' onto the west end for "cold" storage, gravel floor, no heat etc.
Here is the site cleared,


Digging the holes,


We will see how far I get before throwing in the towel and hiring someone to finish it.

This is similar to what I will have built. I don't think I can do it myself, nor do I have the help to do it. I have received several quotes for 30x40x12 with two 10x10 commerical insulated doors, one man door. Most come to around $17-$19,000 with 4" concrete floor.

That sounds pretty good.
My estimates are close in $$ but don't include a floor!

I'm doing the holes because everyone here wants to do 16" "cookies" under the poles but new ohio building code calls for 24" diameter and 12" thick pads.

Also I'm kinda lacking the help as well, was able to get the wife to run the transponder for the rotary laser to check depth.

My friend is going to build part of his own. 30x50 I think. He was thinking about getting a contractor in to set/level/square the poles and the top 2x6 dobule stringer. Then take it from there himself.

When you say double stringer are you referring to the truss headers?
We use 2x10s for our truss headers on a 30' span.

I built a 32x48x10 about 12 years ago and hired a contractor to set the poles and did the rest our self.

Jim, sending you a PM.

bones wrote:

This is similar to what I will have built. I don't think I can do it myself, nor do I have the help to do it. I have received several quotes for 30x40x12 with two 10x10 commerical insulated doors, one man door. Most come to around $17-$19,000 with 4" concrete floor.

What kind of construction are you looking at?
Vinyl side, shingles. all steel etc.

Will have to look for the quotes, I don't remember where they are. I would love to have vinyl siding (triple 3's) and shingles to match my home but its so much more expensive. If I went that route, I could at least do the siding myself and even the shingles, I would just need some helpers for that.

Well poured the concrete on Tuesday, 5.5 bag mix(3000psi) with fiber added.
Ordered 3.5 yards and had enough left over for two 3'x8'x3.5" pads that will most likely be used for feeder bases for the animals.

Has been raining since and holes have pretty much filled up.
Ordered the posts, girts, headers and skirt boards today.

Don't worry about the water with the concrete, it will actually help it cure slower while gaining more strength. Good luck with the pole barn, I guess the pictures with the dancers will be posted once it is up? I've never seen a whole barn of dancers at one time !

The concrete had a good 4-5 hrs to flash over before the rain hit so I think it'll be fine as well.
Down side of the rain is the nice dry fill I had is now a pile of clay muck.

Guess I'll have to get working on finding some dancers, I'll be sure to let my wife know it's for the guys on the internet

Set the corner poles today.
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Set up the batten boards, ran all the strings, diagonals etc myself.
Had help setting the poles, my friend John helped.......his last name is Deere.
Also had some hole cleanup to do from the rain and a couple posts were near the edge and had to dig a little to clear the uplift blocks.
Have warned others this might set a record for the slowest pole barn build.
So sit back, grab some  and enjoy!

Set 4 more posts before getting ready for work.
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Lookin' good!

Are the dancers aware these are not round poles?
Wish I had to space to put one up. It would be nice to be able to keep all the equipment inside where there is room to work on it in the winter.

TheQuig wrote:

Are the dancers aware these are not round poles?
Wish I had to space to put one up. It would be nice to be able to keep all the equipment inside where there is room to work on it in the winter.

Dancers are from Siberia and said pole shape no matter  

Space is nice, have about 6.5 acres.

Was setting my second pole of the day when a neighbor walked over and couldn't believe I was doing it all myself and offered to help. We managed to get all but one 6x6x24' pole in their holes. Tomorrow I will work on squaring them up and back filling. Going to use the tractor on the last 24 footer, that was rough with only two people of which one was just over 60 years old.


Goats seem to like the pile of dirt I gave them.

Lookin' good, Dan. A shop building is on my bucket list ..... will have to make do with two of the three bays in the garage which are packed solid. Have a great 4th ....

Are all the poles the same height, or do you trim some once they are set?

rustbucket wrote:

Lookin' good, Dan.  A shop building is on my bucket list ..... will have to make do with two of the three bays in the garage which are packed solid. Have a great 4th ....

Thanks, my current 2 car small garage is more than half packed along with the basement.

TheQuig wrote:

Are all the poles the same height, or do you trim some once they are set?

All poles will have to be trimmed somewhat.
The poles on the eave ends are 18' and the gable ones are 22-24'. The 6x6x24' will go to the peak of the truss. Pole footers are in the range of 45" deep so might have to trim a couple poles where the truss will sit.
I'd rather trim a couple inches off the had to saw on some added length. 

Have the headers up on one end and 3/4 of the wall girts and base boards.
Thinking of doing one piece 2x12x40' LVLs for the eave side with the door openings.
Would be more $$ but much stronger.
This pic has poor lighting so doesn't come out as well.

I must say that setting headers on 14' walls is much harder especially when your 10+yrs older!
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Its coming along nice. Must be hard considering the heat and humidity that we have lately.

Heat and humidity is just brutal lately. Saturday the thermometer was showing 107* in the sun and I felt it. Low 90s today, lots of water, pop, watermelon, fruits etc. Sunburn set in today.

Very hot again today, Thunderstorms in the late afternoon cooled things down for a while. Lucky for me I left my truck windows open so my interior got a slight bath.

County fair is going on so not much will be happening, maybe.
Lumber yard will deliver 40' LVLs so I need to climb to the top of the poles and notch out 1/4" since the LVLs are 1 3/4" thick instead of the standard 1 1/2". Guess it's as good a time as any to buy a router.

Trusses should be here on 7/22 along with the 24' Intex pool.
Nothing like multiple projects to keep things going.

This is also our week for the county fair, I supposed to be there now, but I stopped home to change cloths and take a break before going. We are in the 4 H program with Ducks, one with goats, and I"m in the Bowbenders that is a shooting club. This will be the first night the humidity isn't so bad.

Nice!

Here's a good laugh for you. When this city boy first heard of a pole barn, he thought it meant a barn built log cabin style out of telephone poles.

We had a icelandic ram and shetland ewe my daughter showed but we sold the sheep herd this year and now the wife has some goats. Many chickens, ducks, peacocks and a turkey. We have white peacocks that she shows and some fancy chickens as well.

Ulmus, the original pole barns did use old telephone poles for the uprights. So you are not too far off on your thoughts. In fact one of my sheds in Wisconsin had round poles instead of square.

Truck and camper are at the fair grounds but wife spending tonight here since they don't have to be up real early for showing on Friday. Nice having it there for a place to crash during the day.

My family is sleeping over at the fair grounds tonight. Not me, I need a real bed and don't want to park the trailer in a muddy field.

Milestone today, last truss header is up.
I'll have a pic later but I set a 9 1/4 x 40' LVL myself today. Used some back woods engineering to make a jib extension on the "hoe" since it would only go about 13' and I needed a good 15+. Still came up 1' short.......

Set one end on a cross bar and then had to pick the other end up a good 1.5' to reach the other cross bar. All while standing on a extension ladder a good 13' up. OHSA would be proud!

Two 24' extension ladders would be sooo nice so I didn't have to keep moving this one from end to end. My 10' step ladder is basically useless at this height.

Update with new pictures.

Here is the hillbilly jib extension that was still too short for the truss headers let alone the trusses
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Headers all up:
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Walls all squared up and corner braced, first truss with 1' over hang laddered in:
Note pool in back ground that was set up during all this
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This picture is a little dark but you can just make out the boat winch anchored to the pole that I used to winch up the truss. At the top of the 6x6 is a small pulley that was robbed from a old sale boat for mast "stuff".

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