YAPB (yet another pole barn)

[phantom309]

Had another question. Since I'm sure that there will be many more to follow, I thought I'd go ahead and post a thread that is topic-neutral that I can update now and then.

As with several others, I'm starting down the path towards putting up a pole barn. Have asked several questions already and found this site to be a wealth of info.

FYI, I've built a couple smaller barns in the past.

this 30x42 barn in 2002

and this 36x54 one in 2004

Unlike the last two, the one I'm putting up now will be built largely of wood instead of steel. The reason for this is that I want to fully insulate this barn, put in a small living quarters with heat, AC, plumbing, etc and wood offers better insulation properties than steel.

The barn I've recently started on will be 42x63. One difference in my barn from most is that I'm using 3.5 x 3.5 x 3/16" A500 tubing for the load bearing posts instead of wood. I like the idea of burying the poles to offer additional bracing to the building but was a little nervous about putting wood poles in the ground. That, plus the fact that the relatively slim 3.5" poles can be hidden in a wall that is framed with 2x4's will make the living area look a little more finished.

Here's a picture of some of the poles before they went into the ground. You can see that I built a cage at the base out of 2" x 1/4" flat and some weldable rebar. The rebar will eventually be tied into the slab. Hopefully that is only a few weeks off!

 

[phantom309]

Here's a picture of one of the poles getting ready to go in the ground. I built a 19' gin pole for the front of the tractor for this very job (and eventually to use to lift the roof rafters in place).

The gin pole is lifted in place with the 9000lb winch on top of the tractor, secured with chains and then the winch cable is freed up to use to lift the poles.

 

[phantom309]

I put some "steps" on the gin pole to allow it to double as a ladder. Here my wife is removing the cable from the poles after they've been put in place and braced up. Cable attaches to a little hole at the top of the pole that I punched with a torch when I cut the pole to length (chopped down to about 18.5').

 

[phantom309]

This pretty much brings you up to speed on where I am now. This last picture shows all 16 of the poles in the ground.

The front and back (gable) walls will be framed up using traditional stick built framing techniques. Which brings us to my next question:

When we pour the concrete, I need to set all of the J anchors to anchor the bottom sill plate to the slab. I've read that these anchors should be spaced about every 5 feet.

I'm planning to prefab the walls on the ground (slab) maybe ten feet at a time and then tilt them into place, brace them up, etc.

My question is, do I need to make sure and have an anchor near the end of every section of sill plate? In other words, if I put up 10 foot sections of wall, should every section have an anchor at each end, plus one in the middle? I'm thinking that a 10 ft section would have an anchor at 1, 5 and 9 feet, smack in the middle of the 24" gaps between the studs. This is what I'm guessing would be best versus having the ends of some of the sections not tied to the slab. Of course the unsecured section of the wall would be secured to it neighboring section which *would* be secured, so maybe it really doesn't matter.

What is the norm when placing anchors for stick built walls?

Thanks for the pointers. I'm really out of my league in putting together a finished building versus the rather sloppy, dirt floored storage barns I've built in the past...

Mark

 

[phantom309]

Second question -

For non-load bearing walls on the interior of a building, is it common to place anchor bolts in the slab, or just hammer drill some holes after the fact and then place expanding anchors in place, or maybe even just pound in some concrete nails to hold the sill in place?

Mark

 

[drm]

Mark,

Once again I have to say how nice the "poles" look. I am partial to tube steel and wish I had the talent & experience to work with steel.

To answer your first question, I would place the anchor bolts as you stated, at 1, 5, and 9 feet on each panel. Some codes only require an 8 foot spacing on the anchor bolt while other state 4 feet which I use. The three bolts per panel will also help in areas where you stop for the day or weekend. Also, attach the panels together to give the wall sections more rigidity. When you set the J bolts make sure you have at least 12” embedded in the concrete with at least 3” of concrete below the bottom of the bolts and on each side. I would also suspect that you will be attaching the wall panels to the side of your posts.

The norm for stick built walls is another thing. It is what that builder typically does. I have seen them spaced at 4 to 10 feet, sometimes placed with no thought and other times planed as you speak of. Ultimately, it is best to plan the locations. Based on what I saw on your web page I am guessing you will layout the bolts or you would not ask. If you do not just be sure to have at least 2 bolts per panel and not located at studs (obvious but does happen).

The second question, for interior partition walls go back and drill and screw with TapCon concrete screws or Powder actuated fasteners. Embedment of screws should be at least 1 ¼” and powder actuated fasteners ¾” minimum but check with mfg. recommendations.

…Derek

 

[phantom309]

Thanks a lot for the info Derek!

Thanks to the generous help of folks such as you, this web site has really provided me with a tremendous amount of help!

It is much appreciated.

Mark

 

[Neuropel]

Those are great looking poles, and they have really peaked my curiosity. I'm planning a pole barn 74'x40'. I know NOTHING about building engineering, so excuse my ignorance in asking this question, but how does the strength of a metal pole like that compare to a 6x6 PT post set in the ground?
I have basic welding skills and equipment, and I'm wondering what the cost per pole is if you go that route? Is there any way you could provide a more detailed picture or description on how you built the cages at the bottom? Looks like with that setup, you could nearly just put the pole in the ground and pour the concrete around it, setting it plumb. With my planned barn, the poles only need to be 10' above grade, but there is an entire second floor so I have to have floor joists along the entire length of the barn. My barn will house horses, so I will have central posts in the ground to attach stall walls, stall doors, etc. and I've laid these out so that the floor joists can be nailed to these posts. If I were to use metal poles like this, is there a good way to attach the wall girts, etc. so that they just basically replace my plan for pressure treated poles? Also, did you paint or protect the portion of the post that's going into the concrete?
Thanks for showing us!
Todd Kirby

 

[phantom309]

Hi Todd-

I've posted the only pictures of the poles that I have but can offer a few more details for you. The cage at the bottom is built out of 2" x 1/4" flat steel, cut into 4" lengths. Could adjust length to fit larger or smaller holes. With the 4" length, the cage is maybe 14" across which still allows some wiggle room in the 24" dia holes when getting everything squared up.

The steel tabs mentioned above are welded to the corners of the tubing at (approx 45 degree angle) the lowest set of tabs is about 4" from the bottom of the pole; the next two rows of tabs are set with 9" between them and the one below. So the top set of tabs is about 28" from the bottom of the hole. Once the tabs were welded to the tubing, I then welded five foot pieces of 3/8" weldable rebar to the ends of the tabs, running parallel to the tubing. These four pieces of rebar will be bent over and tied into the rebar in the slab when it is poured. Finally, three pieces of 3/8" rebar were tied into place around the circumference of the cage.

The 16 pieces of tubing (20' long) ran about $1800, so they weren't cheap. Add in a few bucks per pole for the tabs and rebar and I'm probably at $115.00 per finished pole.

The two factors that convinced me to buy steel instead of wood were:

1) I got kindof paranoid after reading all of the stories about wood poles and concrete not playing well together. Ideally I wanted to tie the piers and slab together and didn't think that that would be good with wood. I guessed that steel would do better being planted in concrete. I did clean up the poles and slapped a coat of Rustoleum on them for good luck.

2) One thing I like about steel is that if you buy a straight steel post, bring it home and let it sit for a while, when you go back out later, it is still straight! I find it very aggravating to buy straight lumber, stack it nice and neat in the garage/barn and come out a week later and it is curled, warped, twisted, etc!

You asked about strength comparing wood poles to steel. In this great book I found a table that lists the maximum safe loads for (unbraced) wood members in compression.

For 12' 4x6's, the max load is 3,900lbs
For 12' 6x6's, the max load is 17,400lbs

I ran the numbers to calculate similar max loads for steel tubing and came up with the following:

For 12' 3 x 3 x 3/16, the max load is 18,700lbs
for 12' 3.5 x 3.5 x 3/16, the max load is 29,000lbs

So 3x3 tubing would have done the job of a 6x6. I went with the 3.5" because it would work well to build it into a wall framed from 2x4s. For what it's worth, at 8' pole spacing and 42' building width, and 40lbs/ft^2 (live and dead load), I figure that each pole will only be subject to a max of a little over 6,000lbs. So any of the above is overkill. Especially so since the numbers above are for unbraced members, and all of the poles will end up with quite a lot of bracing.

To answer your last question, securing the wood girts, etc to the steel will be a little more difficult than with wooden posts.

To connect the load bearing eave girt (the 2x12 double header that will support the roof rafters), I recently made some steel plates out of 10" x 3/8" steel plate that will support the 2x12s. These plates also have a 3" wide piece of 3/8" plate welded to the bottom to provide a bearing area for the 2x12 to sit on. So from the side, these plates look kindof like a tall, thin, upside down capital 'T'. The plates also have 1/2" holes punched in them so the 2x12's can be bolted in place also. The two 2x12's will sandwich the steel plate.

Here's a picture of the steel plates. You can see that the bottom piece of 3" steel is "notched" to allow the 10" plate to sit flush on the post and welded in place. I made the steel plates 18" long to allow for a large bearing area for the 2x12s and this also allowed the holes through the 2x12s to be moved a ways from the end as suggested in some texts I read.

For the rest of the girts, I'm going to run 2x4's horizontally along the length of the building. I will attach those to the poles with some "clips" that I made out of 2x3x3/16" angle iron, cut to 6" in length, with three holes punched to allow the 2x4's to be attached with deck screws.

It is certainly the case that the steel posts have required that I invest more time and $$$ in the building, but the $$$ wasn't too much in the big picture and the time didn't amount to much since I did all of that prefab during the dead of winter when it was too cold to be getting much done outside.

I'm looking forward to getting the plumbing rough in and concrete done so things can get moving again!

Mark

ps: The picture shows the steel plates described above. The longer ones are for "middle" poles which will have 2x12 headers on each side. The shorter ones are for the end poles which will have headers only on one side of the pole.

 

[Neuropel]

This looks like a great alternative to wood posts in the ground, for sure. I had no idea steel had gone up that much (last time I bought steel was about a year ago). For those header plates, do you think it'd be a good idea to put a piece of your 3" at the top to catch the top of the pole?

I understand perfectly the plates for the header, but I'm still fuzzy on your angle iron clips for the 2x4 girts. I assume the load for the siding is all on the welds between the clips and the poles (which is fine), but I'm unclear on how you're fastening the girts to the clips? I'm going with a post and beam type of construction and will be attaching vertical 1"x12" hemlock siding (board and batten). How would I best attach the horizontal girts for fastening the siding? I don't think the clips would need to be all that beefy for attaching the siding.
Looks like you do nice work! I'd have to have a shop fab up the metal for my brackets since I don't have a way of cutting the 3/8" plate or drilling that many holes (no drill press), but I could weld them up in the evenings. I'd also go ahead and attach all the plates and clips to the poles before setting them in the ground?

By the way, I checked pricing for 3.5"x3.5"x3/16" A500 tubing and was quoted $7.85 per foot. That's higher than wood of course, but if you compare the cost to using something like permacolumns it comes out close! And it sounds like it is WAYYYYY stronger.