Posts Footings: What do you prefer?

[GPintheMitten]

I'm no expert but if you were to trench, build footers for each post and then used form tube to bring the column up to grade. And use fasteners to transition to wood posts, it would seem to eliminate the issue with water retention rotting the posts.

I don't know how you would assure that the columns would not be damaged during backfill but you can probably figure that out.

Then you could include drain tile but I like the idea of trying to manage run off with surface grading.

If you do it this way, you might want to pour the tube and footing together or use rebar protruding from the footing into the tube form.

 

[nybirdman]

Poles were braced by long 2x4's.Not that difficult.I know we should have taken a bunch of pictures.
My SIL, whom the barn was built for, is a structural engineer,so you know it was done right and according to code.

 

[EddieWalker]

Are you ever planning on putting in concrete for the floor? If so, then going stick built is going to offer other advantages for you if you are already going to spend the money on concrete? To me, it doesn't make sense to build with poles if you can have a solid foundation to build on top of.

Eddie

 

[LD1]

Are you ever planning on putting in concrete for the floor? If so, then going stick built is going to offer other advantages for you if you are already going to spend the money on concrete? To me, it doesn't make sense to build with poles if you can have a solid foundation to build on top of.

Eddie

What other advantages will stick-built offer?

Yes, this pole barn is going to have concrete. And the advantage to still building with poles is cost. Foundation cost more, stud wall will cost more, and really cant go 8' OC posts cause the wall wont handle ALL the load in those few locaions, so down to 2' OC trusses, which increases the cost of the roof BIG TIME.

 

[SPIKER]

LD1

Not a big deal, to hire the rough framing and poles/trusses to be put in/up by a crew, lots of Amish Crews in the area that will do it for very little $.

My PB has 24" x 8" cookies under the posts.
The holes were ~42" by 48" deep.
the posts were put in with treated 2x6x24" nailed onto the post side at the bottom (reason for larger dia hole.) I would have liked them to be LAG BOLTED or THRU bolted in but 1000's (of pole barns) have nothing but a pole to hold them into the ground & weight of barn.

Doing the trench is not best way as others said, back a long time ago I had a pole barn thread and so far has been great.

I dug a perimeter drain 36" or so out from bottom outside edge, down & out into french drains I built.

The dig was not a square hole but one with one side steeply slopped back towards the barn. I put in sock covered tile in and then stapled dual layer of plastic to the barn skirt boards. The plastic 1st layer went into bottom of trench & had the tile laid on top of it. there was a layer of gravel (enough to just cover the tile) then the 2nd layer of plastic was laid back on top of gravel so it (water draining on plastic covered w sand& gavel) empties on top of the tile.

I capped the plastic with sand & landscape fabric layer of creek wash gravel and then landscape fabric on top of that gravel. The final layers are dirt/clay so ALL of it has some slope to move water away from barn & poles. I eventually added from 4" to 2 feet of fill along with the landscaping to move water away from the barn. Only thing I have FAILED at was getting spouting on the barn. Was going to be the next spring after it was framed in 2002, so far still is next spring 13 years later :/

old details



As for concrete it took almost 10 years for me to get my concrete in, needed the barn and saved to pay for the crete.


Mark

 

[LD1]

I thin that's what I am planning now. 2x6 or something around the base for uplift.

If only I could find an Amish crew to rough it out cheaply. I don't consider $5800 labor cheap for just rough framing and metal that shouldn't take more than 2-3 days with a crew of 2 or 3. Maybe I am wrong and that's the going rate. If so, I can handle the work just fine.

For me, it would be worth 2-3k to get framed and metaled. More than that, its worth the savings to do myself.

I like the plastic tapering down to the tile idea. I may do that but probably after the build. I assume you put the tile in lower than the bottom of the posts?

 

[SPIKER]

I thin that's what I am planning now. 2x6 or something around the base for uplift.
..
For me, it would be worth 2-3k to get framed and metaled. More than that, its worth the savings to do myself.

I like the plastic tapering down to the tile idea. I may do that but probably after the build. I assume you put the tile in lower than the bottom of the posts?

The tile started out about 30" or so outside the barn perimeter and about 20" deep at that high side. it sank in depth but not a lot only enough fall to keep all the water flowing out towards the low side and into the french drains. The drains at the two lower corners are 30 or 40 feet out and sink to 5 or 6 feet deep. There are old cement blocks stacked in the bottom of the french drains and covered in landscape fabric too.

I dont like to put much of anything heavy close to the barn so depth is not much of an issue, BUT I think the concrete truck front tire crushed one of them cutting close in... :/ Never know if they are working other than it stays dry next to the barn.

The 2x6 on the bottom are good but like others said long time ago for hundreds of years people just stuck the poles into the ground and tamped them.

I also tamped the heck out of all my poles, used a 6' spud bar to tamp them all in. I managed to gain about 2 or 3 CF of dirt per hole weeks AFTER they tamped them in with jumping jack & compact foot. The spud bar has a 3" or so round flat end and a 3" chisel end on other end. 1" or so solid steel bar in between.


When we finish graded the inside of the barn a few weeks prior to the pour I added more sand/clay compacting mixture and used a story pole to level it to the 2nd floor. (Story pole is a pole cut/nailed to form a "T" you invert it and use it on the level 2md floor joists to level inside of the sand/clay then roll/vibe tamp.)
Mark

 

[tman1020]

Hard to beat a large footing down below frost. 3 to 4 times the size of the post is a good guide. Individual augured post holes are the best way to accomplish this. If you want to do a trench put in a standard footing and foundation wall. As far as drain work is there anyway you could put in a swale above grade out away from the building to divert water at surface level. this is cheaper and less maintenance if the site will allow for it.

 

[LD1]

The 2x6 on the bottom are good but like others said long time ago for hundreds of years people just stuck the poles into the ground and tamped them.


Mark

And that would probably work in my case too. BUT....I dont want to spend 15k on a building, then have issues because I skimped out on $50 worth of lumber and an extra few minutes of work per post hole.

That, plus I think the framing and siding (what I was trying to hire done) will go up pretty quick. But was still gonna leave the one gable end open til concrete gets poured. Then finish it off.

That gable end points to the west. And with a 14' high building, and leaving 40' oped to the west....dont want uplift issues that can be averted so easily and cheaply.

This past summer, I actually saw a open sided animal shed blown over and laying on its back.

 

[GPintheMitten]

It doesn't hurt to do some extra work to prevent uplift.

Are you sure that open shed run in was anchored with posts? Often they are built on runners and just sit on the ground. Some people like the idea of moving them like a sled.
Personally I have not fastened cross arms to the bottom of the post. But I have done it just below ground level on fence posts to prevent leaning posts.

I say if you want the extra support and assurance, go for it.

Did you decide yet whether to drill holes or make a trench?

 

[LD1]

At the moment I am leaning towards drilling the holes. But all I have is a 9" auger. IF I can find a bigger one on c-list for a fair price between now and then that would be great.

 

[SPIKER]

Wish I had taken some photos of the post prep and hole prep but I was doing a lot of clean up work as well as keeping the poles moved using the tractor while the amish boys were drilling; cleaning holes, staking poles and hammering in the stringers...

I kept real busy cleaning up stuff and keeping area free of chunks while the rough framing was being done. I put down 20K for the barn in photos which included 2 doors & insulated Garage door. everything is on 16" centers on 2nd floor joists and rafters. downstairs is typical pole barn construction.

The concrete was $6800 installed but again I did all prep work including under slab insulation PEX-AL-PEX infloor tubing etc. I had probably 4 CY extra of concrete ordered overage which was 300 bucks more spent than needed.


mark

 

[EddieWalker]

This past summer, I actually saw a open sided animal shed blown over and laying on its back.

I like how much research you are putting into this. One of the things people tend to do is rely on what others say who have only been involved in one build, or just base their knowledge of casual observation. There are numerous reasons for a building to fail, most common is a lack of basic building skills in how the framing is done. I have a job next week where a crew of "framers" started a job and then disappeared after a couple of weeks. The client thought they where pros because they had done so many houses in the area. Everything they did was sloppy and in a few places, totally wrong. Once I pointed out to him what I was seeing, it was pretty obvious to him that they didn't know what they where doing.

If that animal shed had been built with poles in the ground at least three feet deep, there is no way they would have come out of the ground. Without pics it's impossible to know what happened, but my money is on sloppy framing being the cause of the failure.

Eddie

 

[jix]

The biggest issue is frost heave..here in New Brunswick we use a plastic form called a Bigfoot. It is an inverted cone with a ten inch dia tube that goes down to the cone. You dig a hole deep enough to get the base of the cone below frost (4 feet or more, then tamp the dirt and throw in the cone, full it with concrete, then put in the down tube and the post and fill that too, ensure that the post is plumb and backfill... Then let the concrete set.
The plastic down tube does not let the frost get a grip on the post, nor admit water. The bottom of the cone is about 32" in diameter and will carry huge loads. My two storey house 54 x 38 feet has ten of these as a the foundation. NOT a quarter of an inch of movement in 25 years!

I did not pour footings at all, soft sand is why. Nor did I put drains around the perimeter. My foundation wall sills are made of 10x10 PT Hemlock, sitting on the top of the bigfoot concrete tube. The crawl space under the floors has a heavy guage one piece geotechnical impermeable membrane at grade, covered with 2" of crusher dust rock (to prevent moisture from leaching up into the wooden sub floor and to keep the bugs from colonizing the space. The underside of thesub floor also has spayed foam to moisture seal it from exterior cold air and top side it has a very good membrane vapour barrier to seal it from interior warm humid air, The vertical steel stud walls rest upon floor sills that are bolted to the sub floor and each sill bolt is sealed at the point where it penetrates the sub floor. The floor sills are bolted on 24" centers, so no fastener holes compromise the vapour barrier. Water and sewer lines, electrical cables, etc enter through the floor in conduit boxes filled with spray foam and cold-water lines are insulated to prevent sweating.
The crawl space is hoarded at the perimeter with engineered plastic-based deck boards with screened ventilation ports that look like basement windows.

Big foot concrete forms are key to structure stability on a soft sand building site...and far cheaper than other workable alternatives.

The barrier on the warm side of the floor boards is the orange colored poly product used to seal a shower enclosure.

 

[bamboozled]

East side of I-71, somewhere between Delaware and Mt. Gilead by chance?

This past summer, I actually saw a open sided animal shed blown over and laying on its back.

 

[GPintheMitten]

I like how much research you are putting into this. One of the things people tend to do is rely on what others say who have only been involved in one build, or just base their knowledge of casual observation. There are numerous reasons for a building to fail, most common is a lack of basic building skills in how the framing is done. I have a job next week where a crew of "framers" started a job and then disappeared after a couple of weeks. The client thought they where pros because they had done so many houses in the area. Everything they did was sloppy and in a few places, totally wrong. Once I pointed out to him what I was seeing, it was pretty obvious to him that they didn't know what they where doing.

If that animal shed had been built with poles in the ground at least three feet deep, there is no way they would have come out of the ground. Without pics it's impossible to know what happened, but my money is on sloppy framing being the cause of the failure.

Eddie

My guess is that the wind blew it over. If it was bad framing it would have come apart not just get upwinded. As I said before it may have been built on skids rather than post and frame.

 

[oldpilgrim]

About 20 years ago, I contracted a nationally recognized company to build a pole barn for the company I worked for. It was used to house my company's livestock. It was about 60x100 feet as I remember.

They dug holes below the frost line for the exterior walls and slightly less deep for the interior support poles and then dropped an unopened bag of concrete mix in each hole, set the post on it it and backfilled the posts. Then came the concrete floor. Each of the poles were then 'topped' to the proper length..

It seemed a little unusual to me.

Unfortunately we had a fire about 5 years later and it burned to the ground. (no fault with the building).

When we rebuilt, I oversaw that project too and observed them removing the old poles, during the site prep. The concrete bags that were under the poles were rock hard and supported the poles just as if there was a poured concrete footing.

I was amazed at how well just dropping a bag of concrete in a hole worked.

I plan on adding a wing to my barn and this is the method I will be using.

 

[LD1]

East side of I-71, somewhere between Delaware and Mt. Gilead by chance?

Sure is. I didnt see it from 71 tough. As I almost NEVER travel between 61 and 95 on the freeway. I live in the sticks about halfway between the two. So if I go north, I hop on at 95. If I go south I get on at 61. But never a need for being in the middle. I actually saw it from CR20.

IF you enter this 40.462888, -82.765787 into google maps, it should pull up the coordinates of the exact building I saw upended, but otherwise intact. Couldnt tell if it was poles or skids, cause it was ~1/2 mile off the road. IT was red with a white top though...