Barn Floor

[TWINKLE_TOES]

BXMark,

A 20 x 24 pad really isn't all that much concrete, about 6 yd's (160 cu ft)for a 4" pour. Have you considered perhaps doing the job in two or three pour's and hauling the mix in your bucket. With 600 lb's per trip, about 4 cu ft. 13-14 trips and your 1/3 done. Do the next section another day.
If the distance for the trip dosen't take to long or road too rough, this might work. At some point usually 30 minutes the truck will want more bucks to stick around. Think how impressed your wife will be for the uses you have found for your tractor, you could take a picture and be famous in Harv's front loader thread./w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif
Al

 

[BXmark]

What gave me the idea for the wood floor was some large 12x16 yard barns I built for a company back in the 80s. They had 4x6 sleepers 2' apart leveled on the ground or preferably on a gravel bed. Then we laid 2x6 treated T&G flooring. Several of these buildings were used for storing cars. After 20 years there is no sign of rot. You got to keep in mind, properly treated wood is more like petrified wood than the original organic thing.
I remember on the farm where I worked as a kid; the farmer's barn had a wood floor of 8-10" logs more than 2' apart and spanning a good 16-18'. He parked a school bus in this barn every day for years.

 

[Devildog]

BXmark,
A 12x16 is exactly what Im getting ready to build. This helped me out on what to do for the subfloor.
___________________________________________________
Take care, Jim

2001 B7500 HST 302 Fel R4 Tires.
Semper Fidelis

 

[TerryinMD]

BXmark,

The floor was probably 1" nominally cut oak or chesnut, two layers thick!!

Terry

 

[RichNJ]

You may want to check out a 'span table' in any book on wood frame construction. This table lists acceptable deflection of various sized lumber for various loads.
I used a span table many, many times when building or remodeling. This way you don't underbuild or overbuild.
I just priced a 5" concrete floor for my barn and I got several quotes at around $1.80 per sq ft. My barn is 30x56ft.That price includes all labor and materials with the ready-mix truck able to shoot the concrete thru the main door and a window. A concrete pump added about about $700 to the price. I leveled the site and put in several inches of stone for a base already.
One of the concrete companies around here has a small truck that they use for tight spots or weight limitations. The concrete costs more of course.

 

[BXmark]

Rich, around here the going rate is $3.00 a sq ft for flatwork. That does not include excavating or clearing the site or gravel. Then it would have to be pumped 200'.
That barn they used to park the school bus in had oak flooring 1 1/2 inches thick not T&G.

 

[BXmark]

Get this-- I called our county Building Dept. and told them I wanted to put up a large yard barn with a wood floor. They said as long as it was not on a "permanent" foundation or slab no building permit or inspections are required. Better yet, they told me it would not be taxed as real estate so no increase in property taxes.

I had a local lumber yard that specializes in pressure treated lumber work me up a quote on a 20x24 floor, 4x6 ground contact sleepers on 16" centers (they said 24" centers were adequate), 2x6 T&G treated flooring, including epoxy coated screws--- $1,139.

 

[dummy]

Don't know how to insert links, but www. southernpine.com has some pretty good charts available on their web site.

 

[MikePA]

Here's the link Southern Pine.

 

[Youare]

Around 1989 I built a barn/garage that is 24X26. I did not have the money to have a concrete floor poured, but I did have a saw mill and the access to all the timber I needed. I put in a wooden floor that I still drive on today.

I planted railroad ties in the ground on end 6' apart. On top of those I placed 4"X8" timbers like a sill, running the opposite direction on top of the 4X8's I placed 4"X6"X12' timbers 24" apart. The deck on top of this is two layers of 1" pine boards running in opposite directions which gives me a 2" thick floor.

I have driven my full size pickup loaded with sawdust over the floor for the horses that share one half of the building. I park the truck in the barn over night in the winter, this winter the Kubota will force the truck to say outside.

The legnth of span your 2X6's will bridge is the critical element. I think the 2X6's you want to use are a little light for the task unless you have a short span and put them about 12" on center apart with good bridgeing straps in. I used full cut stock so a 2X6 was 2" by 6" not 1 1/2" X 5 1/2", there is a big difference. When you consider the square inch area of the end of one piece against the other the full cut piece comes out at 12 square inches and the other so called 2X6 comes out at 8.25 square inches. That is more than a 30% difference which equates to a much weaker piece of wood. Most of the old barns were built out of full cut lumber.

You can have a wood floor provided you put in the correct size floor members. One thing to keep in mind is there has to be an air space under the floor that can breathe or else even pressure treated lumber will rot after a while.

Randy