Who's Built Their Own Pole Barn

[Rumbles1960]

Hi All, Just new here but been lurking around a while. Retirement is just around the corner and I have bought some property in Bancroft, Ont. I plan on retiring to. First thing I will need is a pole barn style garage/shop. Saving money is important and I'm pretty handy so I'm thinking of building it myself or at least some of it. Can anyone advise on wether this is feasable or what part of the construction would or would not be? Thanks

 

[Gary Fowler]

If you have and FEL you should be able to set the rafters on top of the poles with it. Do a search and you will find some ingenious devices folks have made for just these activities that allow them to reach up to 25 feet with the FEL by attaching a boom pole to the FEL bucket. You would need some real finesse with the hydraulic to smoothly pick up the pre-assembled rafter spans, but they seemed to do it OK>
Since you are so far north, I would think that your biggest hurdle would be digging the holes for your poles and getting them down below the frost line. This might require some special equipment to dig and set them and get them plumb and in the correct location. They would need to be pretty well dead nuts right on coordinates unless you planned to stick build each and every rafter to fit. Once the poles are set, the rest is a cake walk. There is also a lengthy discussion here from someone who built their pole barn and listed all the issues that he had. Be worth your time to search it out under the Built it Yourself forum.

 

[bobodu]

I built my 24 x 40 completely by myself with the exception of having my 63 year old neighbor help hold the post hole auger. Took about two months of free time from post holes to the last outlet cover plate. I built my own trusses from plans I found on the internet and hung them by just carrying one end up to the top of the ten foot wall,then carrying up the other end. Rolled them upright with a 12 foot 2 x 4 and leaned them against the last one until I could put it in place.

 

[Redbug]

Here's another source/way. I'm in SC, and would have to pay a little extra for shipping. Just another avenue to research...

DIY Pole Barns & Supplies - Supplying America's Do-It-Yourselfers

 

[john_bud]

You can do the work yourself pretty easily. A post hole digger with 12" (15" would be better) auger is very helpful. It's not too bad to get the posts into the holes by hand. It's a 2 guy job or a one large guy job for sure! The rafters can also be a one man job, but 2 or 3 makes it much easier. You can do a lot with rope and blocking if you are inventive and alone.

Everything else is pretty straight forward. Well worth the 3-5000 labor cost savings.

jb

 

[ragkar]

My area was just north of the southern boundary of the ice sheet and is consequently heavy in buried small boulders. So it's not possible to dig a nice vertical hole without hitting rocks and having to widen the hole. The technique that they use here is to dig the hole as best they can and then set the poles in concrete.

 

[bobodu]

As a side note... I was told by the Building Dept that they prefer the posts to be set in tamped gravel instead of concrete since it will drain away from the posts.

 

[o2batsea]

If there's any possible way to have this built by a professional, then that is absolutely the best way. I tried building my barn myself, but it turnrd out that it was just too much. Now understand that I have several years of professional carpentry in my history, so I know what I'm doing. What became the show stopper was the fact that it was going to take me so many weekends that I wouldn't have finished for a year. I finally admitted it was too much for one man and paid to have it done. Slab and block foundation, T-111 walls, three really large doors, electrical, roofing, and the road to get to it.

 

[ArTrvlr]

Here is one method for pole type construction to consider. It does away with any potential problems digging/drilling holes. socket systems - home

Here is a good forum discussion of someone building with this system. My New Garage Build - The Garage Journal Board
jp

PS: I have no relationship with Socket Systems

 

[flusher]

Hi All, Just new here but been lurking around a while. Retirement is just around the corner and I have bought some property in Bancroft, Ont. I plan on retiring to. First thing I will need is a pole barn style garage/shop. Saving money is important and I'm pretty handy so I'm thinking of building it myself or at least some of it. Can anyone advise on wether this is feasable or what part of the construction would or would not be? Thanks

Haven't built a pole barn, but I did build this pole frame shed (20x28 ft, 10ft roof dropping to 9 ft) last year. If I can build something like this, anyone can. It's not difficult and I did it myself, completely.

Used my Mahindra 5525 with FEL to lift 16 ft 2x12s into place on the tops of the 4x6 posts (pressure treated). This was the most difficult part of the job since two 2x12s had to be set on each pair of posts to form a 4x12 nail-lam beam. Having the 5525 with detachable bucket forks to lift these boards to nearly full height made this task pretty easy.

BTW: I celebrated my 67th birthday while doing this project which was my first attempt at a pole frame shed.
Material cost: about $3500.

I used a gravel floor for this shed. For my shop (24x42 ft metal frame building with 12ft walls) I had a contractor pour the slab. Leave that work to the pros. I also had the shop building installed by a contractor.

I plan to build two additional all metal sheds similar to the one noted above. These will be 18x27 ft structures with 9.5 ft wall height. I'll order the material and assemble them myself later this year. I expect this project to be a lot easier than the wood frame shed since the parts count is much lower for the all metal shed and the metal frame components are quite a bit lighter weight than the lumber I used for the wood frame shed.

 

[Conservation]

I had the frame and metal put up on my 40X40X15 pole building and the garage doors put up. I am finishing the rest. Those guys put the entire thing up in two good 8 hour days. Just 3 of them, and the 3rd was only there for part of each day! I just seemed to move along for them.

 

[john_bud]

The other thing you could do would be to contract out having the posts set and the rafters raised. A 3-4 man crew with a lift and a hydraulic PHD can get that done in a day. Then you can monkey around with the rest. Labor for that would probably be 1000 or so at a guess.

I did a 25x32 extension (with help for the posts and rafters!!) and it took about a month to 6 weeks of diddling around mostly on weekends.

 

[easeup]

I put up an all metal pole barn by myself a couple of summers ago. It is 30x30. all welded. didn't take that long to do it but hand digging the holes is hard.

 

[Redneck in training]

Hi All, Just new here but been lurking around a while. Retirement is just around the corner and I have bought some property in Bancroft, Ont. I plan on retiring to. First thing I will need is a pole barn style garage/shop. Saving money is important and I'm pretty handy so I'm thinking of building it myself or at least some of it. Can anyone advise on wether this is feasable or what part of the construction would or would not be? Thanks

We bought a barn from Morton Buildings in 2003. They build all perimeter walls, installed three pane Pella windows, garage door, perimeter doors, reinforced styrofoam insulated concrete floor, perimeter wall insulation, 1200 ft long water line, septic, floor heating (the tubes and their installation was paid to another contractor) and all under floor plumbing. All for about $35/sqft. Then we hired a couple of guys to frame inside walls. After that we installed electric wires, plumbing and inside wall insulation, air-condition, geothermal heating, ceramic tiles and maple floors, kitchen cabinets, bathrooms etc. Another contractor did drywall and painting. I estimated that we saved minimum 60 to 80K dollars by doing a lot of work by ourselves. The cost of finished house was about 85 to 90 dollars/sqft and it took about 4 months of intensive work to finish it enough that we could move in. Because it was non traditional house the biggest problem was to get financing. The bad thing was that we had to sank a lot of our cash into the construction but good thing is that we already own about half of the property.

Morton Buildings - Pole Barns, Horse Barns, Steel Buildings, Metal Buildings, Storage Buildings, Farm Buildings

 

[dillo99]

I have a small pole barn (20 x 16) with a loft that I built entirely myself. And I mean entirely - every nail pounded in by me...and no assistance holding or lifting, etc. other than my Kubota. It was a lot of work but can be done. If I was building anything much larger I think I would line up assistance for the upper parts.

It will really depend on how large or elaborate your design is. Pole barns are definitely the easiest type of build.

You can see the barn behind the tractor in this picture. Some might call it more of a large shed!

 

[Baby Grand]

Hope this isn't too off topic. I want to rebuild a decaying 40'x12' shed that's open on one of the the long sides for use as a storage space. I'm having a real hard time finding the "poles". I was thinking that used utility poles would be just the ticket, but my local utility company says they can't/won't sell their used stuff. Any suggestions where I can get them? There must be thousands of them retired every year. Any linemen for the county out there?

-Jim

 

[Redneck in training]

Hope this isn't too off topic. I want to rebuild a decaying 40'x12' shed that's open on one of the the long sides for use as a storage space. I'm having a real hard time finding the "poles". I was thinking that used utility poles would be just the ticket, but my local utility company says they can't/won't sell their used stuff. Any suggestions where I can get them? There must be thousands of them retired every year. Any linemen for the county out there?

-Jim

I got seven of them when the utility was changing them on my property. It is possible that the utility doesn't have them becasue they give them away to the owners of the land they have the lines on. They even sank them wherever I ask them.

 

[SpringHollow]

I built my own 30 x 40 two story barn. Had the holes dug by a rental bobcat with a post hole digger and had the slab done by others. My brothers helped some. Took a while. Came out very nice. Overbuilt like i like to do. Used rafters instead of trusses because i could handle rafters.

Now that i am "older" - i would not try it lol. But at 32 it was not too bad.

Ken

 

[bbowman]

I did sort of a 'hybrid' construction...not really a pole barn.

I framed this one with rough 2 X 6 poplar and white pine (cut off of the farm), then ran horizontal purlins and boxed it with 1 X poplar and pine.

This was my first attempt at anything like this...I even got brave enough to wire it myself! As someone mentioned above, I left the slab and block foundation to the pros, but I did the prep work for the slab.

It took me two full years, but saved a ton in labor costs.

 

[Baby Grand]

Red-
Thanks for the insight. Maybe a wanted ad on Craig's will generate some responses from local land owners.

Bbowman-
That's a sturdy looking building and I like the lines. Congratulations.

Jim