Hayloft is Crashing Down! Help!

[GPintheMitten]

My daughter rents a barn and some of the other facilities at a horse farm from an absentee owner. She gives lessons and boards horses. Well today she put hay up in the loft of one of the barns. There are about 750 square bales up there now. She estimates the bales at about 60# each. There are no horses in that particular barn.

It is a Morton building that the previous owner had built. It is an aisleway barn with (empty) stalls on the outside walls and the aisle running down the middle. The loft is built over the aisleway.

Apparently some of the 2x10 floor joists for the loft are coming out of the joist hangers and falling down. I haven't laid eyes on it yet. I told her to stay out of the barn and call the farm owner. I'm going to look at it first thing in the morning. The farm is about an hour away from me in mid-Michigan. I think the owner lives near Detroit somewhere.

I'm sure the owner will be angry about this, but I told her make the call anyway. That way she let him know as soon as possible so he can attempt to mitigate damage. I'm sure she has a few thousand dollars invested in the hay and the owner has several 10's of thousands in the building.

I think the owner needs to get an engineer in there to look at it and call his insurance company, and possibly Morton Building company. I just want to be sure she and no one else including myself go in there and get hurt.

Ideas anyone?

 

[Artisan]

Take Pictures & post them up... Then you will get a butload of "ideas".

 

[GPintheMitten]

I'll definitely take and post pictures tomorrow. It should be interesting to say the least.

 

[MIKE R]

Lots of photos. This is the first time I have heard of anything like this. It is usually old 70+ year old barns that seem to fall apart. How old is this barn?

 

[GPintheMitten]

I think about 15 years old.

 

[newbury]

UNLOAD the hay!
prop up the joists somehow first.

 

[dave1949]

UNLOAD the hay!
prop up the joists somehow first.

If it can be made safe, yes unload the hay. Start looking for an alternative hay storage spot as it may have to come out to do repairs anyways.

 

[jenkinsph]

Morton in all likelyhood provided the shell of the building only, the loft was an add on that was site built. I suspect that an engineer will not be necessary to find the problem but a good framer to fix the mess will be. Will need to unload, fix the problem then reload, bunch of labor os most of what is needed.

 

[300UGUY]

Most pole barns aren't built with lofts. The bottom chord of the trusses is not engineered to take the weight. I built a freestanding loft in my pole barn, but I took it out later. I'd rather put the hay on pallets, at floor level, than put them up in the loft, and then have to climb up and take them down. If you start stacking hay up, several bales deep, you get into a pretty serious floorloading in a hurry. I'd be surprised if the loft was constructed by Morton. They have a pretty good rep for engineering. When I built my freestanding loft, I used 2x8's on 12 in centers. Supported by a 4x6 every 8 feet. Decked with 3/4 plywood. It still sagged a bit if I got a lot of hay up there.

 

[GPintheMitten]

Here's a pic. The loft is independent of the trusses. It is built with doubled 2x12s nailed to the aisleway posts. The posts are laminated tripled 2x6s, 12 foot on centers. The loft floor joists appear to be 2x12s 16" on center, 12' long. The floor joists are fastened with hoist hangers.

The failure is about in the middle and spans one 12' section between posts. It looks like the only thing holding that section up is the conduit and maybe some lateral support of the now angle joists on the beam.

 

[Artisan]

If you can, take a few more pictures, specifically the rim (the doubled up edge)
and all posts. ALSO, the floor above, take pictures of the floor sheathing and how
it was nailed, or was it nailed? ALSO, at the caved area take a close up of an end
of a joist and a hanger. How many nails and what kind of nails were used at each end?
Are the posts on cement or just in dirt? If you can change the camera
settings to large format too.

Are those 2x12's on 16" centers?

It almost looks like the rim bowed out.

 

[Mike_Kanzer]

WOW! The hayloft is grossly overloaded. You are talking about in excess of twenty tons up there. I think you need to remove the load as soon as possible. Temporary bracing of the collapsed section from underneath would need to be done first before the hay can be removed. I have a 36 x 60ft pole barn with 24 support posts on cement footers with engineered "I" beam joists spanning the 12ft center ailse and was told by the builder I could put 20 tons of hay in the loft distributed over the whole floor area.
I think this exceeded the weight limit of the structure to a significant degree.

 

[yelbike]

ooops!! looks like too much weight at first glance. Take some hay out asap if it can be done safely!!:thumbsup:

 

[LD1]

If you can, take a few more pictures, specifically the rim (the doubled up edge)
and all posts. ALSO, the floor above, take pictures of the floor sheathing and how
it was nailed, or was it nailed? ALSO, at the caved area take a close up of an end
of a joist and a hanger. How many nails and what kind of nails were used at each end?
Are the posts on cement or just in dirt? If you can change the camera
settings to large format too.

Are those 2x12's on 16" centers?

It almost looks like the rim bowed out.

I agree we need some better pictures (IF you can do so safely) to determine a cause.

But I am going to venture a guess that it was faulty construction technique that anchored the joist hangers.

Cause IF they are indeed 2x12's on 16" centers AND only spanning 12', that floor should easily handle 100psf. Which means that the 45,000# of bales would only need spread out over 450 sq ft. (or @ 12' wide loft, it would need evenly distrubuted over about 38ft of length.

So how long is the loft?? and what is the rough length of the loft that the bales are taking up??

It does look like something may have moved or shifted (post or header board) to allow the joists to come loose. cause the 2x12 floor is more than up to handling the hay.

An a side note, I dont care for that style of construction anyway. (relying on joist hangers alone).

A better method IMO would have been to nail a header OUTSIDE of the posts and attach joist hangers to THAT, and then another header board on the INSIDE of the post and UNDERNEATH the posts to support them there as WELL AS the joist hangers. Also, the header boards should be BOLTED to the posts with thru-bolts and not just nailed.

 

[LD1]

I know it is hard to see in this picture, and it isnt exactally the same, but this is what I am talking about. (setting the joists on a ledger/header board)

I know I didnt use joist hangers either, but this floor dont need to hold up and significant weight either. But notice there is a header the joist is setting on, AS WELL AS one that it is nailed to on the end (where you would use a joist hanger).

If this loft were built that way, there is no doubt in my mind (provided the posts are up to par) that it would hold the hay just fine.

PS: was this even designed as a "hayloft"? Did she have permission to store hay up there? Was it used to store hay before?

 

[tlbuser]

I'd rather put the hay on pallets, at floor level, than put them up in the loft, and then have to climb up and take them down.

I put a staircase in the barn, hay is dropped down to the feeders from above.

 

[GPintheMitten]

The barn is about 36x72. The hay is stacked to the peak across 48'x12'. She was going to fill the other 24' x 12' area as well, but that's not going to happen now.

We are going to build some temporary support under the sagging area and take the hay out. Then we will get someone in to fix it.

The doublers are not bolted to the posts, just nailed as far as I can tell. The plywood floor is nailed to the joists. It appears that the doublers are bowing down in the middle of some spans and splayed out which probably pulled the joist hangers away from the joists.

 

[sailfast]

I bet the hangers are screwed instead of nailed

Sent from my MB525 using TractorByNet

 

[GPintheMitten]

More pics.
Hay has been stored there before, but maybe not stacked as high and dense as this. The owner knows that she has been putting hay there. I don't know if specific permission was given but he didn't tell her to stop doing that.

I agree that I wouldn't build it that way either.

 

[LD1]

I would say that it is a combination of improper technique, and insufficent header board.

I dont have time to play with numbers right now, but at first glance, spanning 12', there should probabally be 4 2x12's for the headers for that kind of load, and PROPERLY fastened.

It also appears that the joist hangers arent the right size. If those are indeed 2x12's, those look like 2x8 hangers, probaballt tor short of a nail (they are supposed to criss-cross and tie into the header), and not that it matters and didnt cause the failure, but it dont look like the little tangs of the hanger were hammered into the header.

12' x 48' is 576 sq ft. and if your estimate @ 60#/bale is accurate, that is under 80PSF. The joists should carry that just fine. But as you are finding out, everything else ALSO has to be adequite to carry the load. If the header or posts goes, you could have the strongest floor in the world but it wont matter.