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.