roof trusses

[Anonymous Poster]

has anyone bought or priced wooden roof trusses with about a 30 foot span. i am in the planning/thinking stages of building a shop and was wondering roughly what wood trusses cost.

 

[Knight9]

Hmm...can't help with the 30'....but the 26' span with a 6/12 pitch are $66.87 CDN here. That would be about $43.15 USD with straight conversion. Wouldn't this be pretty area specific though?

Kevin

 

[chim]

Although I don't know what the trusses cost, the builder told me that "attic" trusses were only around $5 more per truss than the standard ones. These gave me a 12' wide open area in my attic on a 30' wide span. We went w/ 7:12 pitch. Some plywood, and it was a nice space. We did use a real stair for access, stacked over the others..........chim

 

[Robert_in_NY]

I can not remember exactly but I think around $70 for a 30' Attic truss. It will depend though on where you are and how many truss builders you have in your area. The more builders the less the trust will cost because of competition.

 

[Carl_NH]

Mark,

I used floor trusses 18"x24'L to clear span my shop/barn then 2x10x20 KD for the roof rafters. This allowed for a full attic area and no posts which is nice when moving cars/tractors around.

Cost of the floor trusses was $85 each - can be used 24" OC for a 40Lb PSF loading - I did 16" OC for 60 Lbs PSF loading, probably overkill but inspectors are happier.

Here's the company that makes a lot of them;

<A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.wsitruss.com/index1.asp>http://www.wsitruss.com/index1.asp</A>

There is a lot of information on various trusses here.

Carl

 

[phantom309]

Has anybody priced what it would cost to make thirty foot wooden trusses themselves? A small stack of 2x4's and some mending plates (or small pieces of plywood to really do it on the cheap) can't cost too much.

I'm just guessing that the seventy or eighty bucks quoted here is probably mostly labor.

 

[RobS]

<font color=blue>I'm just guessing that the seventy or eighty bucks quoted here is probably mostly labor.</font color=blue>

You're probably right but there is also the processing to consider. If you hammer in the mending plates you will become very frustrated pretty quickly. The truss manufacturers use big rollers that push the plates in instead of all the jarring of a hammer. Plywood gussets would work but up goes your labor big time. All in all, trusses are a pretty darn good value /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

 

[KJN128]

answer to your trusses i recently got a price of trusses you can get several kind of trusses some called (attic truss) some calles (sissor truss) some called (regular truss)
the price i got for 30' was alittle under 60 a piece let m etell you you cant buy the lumber for what they can build them for and they doa better job than i could ever do with the alignment and such i am going to build ashed and my house using trusses i promise you after a good storm if there would by anything standing i t woould be the trusses


thanks

 

[Bird]

I don't remember anything about the cost, but when we built my brother's house, we built our own 32' trusses (41 of them) because he priced factory made ones and said it was a lot cheaper to build our own. Whew, I sure did cut out lots of plywood plates on my radial arm saw, and we nailed them with a pneumatic nail gun. You're right that hammering them would not be good.

 

[phantom309]

I'm sure that you and Rob are both right - making wooden trusses would be a pain in the neck and hard to get just right.

I was just wondering as I'm currently in the middle of a barn building project and am making lightweight metal trusses for the wall supports and roof rafters. I guess that I'm hoping that my metal trusses are cheaper than if I'd decided to make wooden ones, but truth be told, I'd use metal anyway as I don't like to work with wood and am mildly allergic to pine sawdust!

Making the metal trusses is also VERY labor intensive but I have a fair amount of time to spare and like spending time in the shop...

The trusses I'm making are coincidentally also for a thirty foot span. I'm only spending eighteen bucks per roof rafter truss so the cost is right, but factor in maybe a total of two hours labor per truss and that raises the "cost" significantly. But for me, I have time to spare and enjoy projects like this so the time isn't a problem.

One of these days I'll post more info on the barn. I'm hoping that it'll be done in the early Fall.

Best,

Mark