Finally started on my Texas pole barn!

[cowpen]

Megado - looking good! Being ready for the roof in the middle of the summer is no fun. I suffered the same fate. Hope it cools down soon!

Slowzuki - I did the same as you on my barn. My roof panels are 28'6" long and they pop as the clouds roll by. How long has yours been up? Any leaks?

 

[accordionman]

SIR,
it appears you have used concrete around the post.
this is a no, no. i have a WICK building, and when
it was being built, i ask the crew about this, and they
said, no concrete around the post, it will not last,
otherwise they could not guarantee it for 30 years.
accordionman

 

[Megado]

SIR,
it appears you have used concrete around the post.
this is a no, no. i have a WICK building, and when
it was being built, i ask the crew about this, and they
said, no concrete around the post, it will not last,
otherwise they could not guarantee it for 30 years.
accordionman

I think the debate over concrete or no concrete has been going on since man first started putting tree trunks in the ground and looking for a better way to hold them in place. You only have to do a search on this forum to see that it's a hotly debated topic that no one can seem to agree upon one way or the other. Trust me...I feel like I probably read over 100 threads on just that one topic alone!

But my deciding factor to go with concrete came when I surveyed a number of local general contractors, along with some of the old-time farmers and ranchers in the area surrounding our property who built there own barns (some over 30 years ago) and to a T they all said they cemented their post in the ground. Not a single one said they didn't. Not sure if it's just a local thing or not, but I figured since there was no definitive answer one way or the other on this forum I was just going to go with the ol' saying of, "When in Rome....."

We were back at the property this past weekend, however, the temp was up over 100f again by mid day so I chose to work on indoor stuff that had been needing attention. We got ZERO rain out of Hurricane Dolly in our neck of the woods in S.E. Texas and there doesn't seem to be much relief in sight. I was amazed at the number of ponds and stock tanks that I saw had completely dried up as we drove around this weekend. It's a little scary seeing those. Our stock tank is down considerably but I still have a ways to go before it reaches critical stage. Sure could use the rain!

 

[accordionman]

SIR,
the debate goes on.
as for the rain, i had over 3 in. in my gage this
morning, bad storm moved in last night. i wish
i could send some of it down to you.
some of my people live in tx. (belton)
good luck with your projects.
accordionman
wlbrown
wright city, mo.

 

[SteelDust]

But my deciding factor to go with concrete came when I surveyed a number of local general contractors, along with some of the old-time farmers and ranchers in the area surrounding our property who built there own barns (some over 30 years ago) and to a T they all said they cemented their post in the ground. Not a single one said they didn't. Not sure if it's just a local thing or not, but I figured since there was no definitive answer one way or the other on this forum I was just going to go with the ol' saying of, "When in Rome....."

Opinions on this do seem to vary by region. Up here, very few people concrete their posts in the ground. Usually post holes are backfilled with sand, crushed rock, or some other medium.

I went with compacted crushed rock on mine. Seeing as you went with concrete, we'll have to check back here in 30 years and see which fared better. Although, that may not be a fair comparison, as a shortage of rain is never an issue in the Northwest. In short, our ground never truly dries out.

 

[wedge40]

Wouldn't it be dependent on weather you're in a zone that has a freeze/thaw season or not. If your in a climate without this then using concrete wouldn't hurt.

Wedge

 

[Megado]

Been awhile since I've had a chance to work on the barn. Between battling the 100f heat and other items needing attention, the barn progress seems to have slowed to a crawl. However I did make some progress this past weekend by getting the purlin blocks installed on the remaining shed side.

As noted in earlier postings, with the width of the 6x post being a true 6" I've had to use clamps to squeeze the rafters together to install the 5 1/2" wide blocks. Each block was also secured with two 3" screws on each side to help prevent the rafters from spreading back apart.

Below are pictures showing the completed purlin blocks which are spaced at 2' increments. I'm hoping to get a nice weekend coming up soon so I can begin the installation of the purlins.

 

[Megado]

After seeing the finished product of SteelDust's barn in his thread, I decided it was time to get back to work on my own replication of his project. If this structure I'm putt'n together turns out to be only half as nice as SteelDust's then I'll consider myself lucky!!!

Weekends at the property have been hard to come by lately (High School Football season, too much real job work, etc) but we finally made it back up there and were able to make some progress on the barn. I finished installing about 2/3 of the purlins on the remaining shed side, but chose not to complete the last section of purlins until I can correct a problem I've run into along the north wall. At issue is the fact that I've got one 6x8 post along that wall that has twisted probably 30 degrees near the top causing my end rafter to be out of alignment with the vertical plane of the wall. I plan to remedy this by notching the post where both the shed and upper rafters and the rafter supports are located so as to bring them back into alignment. (Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo over the weekend that illustrates what I'm referring to but hope to do so the next time I'm there.) For safety reasons, I'm going to wait to do that work when I have the man-lift on site for setting the upper rafters. Figure it'll be much easier and safer than working at the top of a 20 ft extension ladder. My hopes are to get that done over the Thanksgiving weekend, but we'll see how far things are along at that point.

So in the meantime, we got started on installing the joist hangers and 2x10 joist for the loft. As part of my design, I've doubled up the first three rows of joist on the front side of the loft to accommodate the anticipated added weight of a small diesel storage tank at that location. Once installed, this storage tank will be used to fill up my tractor via gravity feed system. The added joist strengthening might be overkill, but I figured I'd rather be safe than sorry later. The pictures below show where we made it before the weekend came to an end.

In taking everyone's advice about the beauty of owning a palm nailer, I decided to go out and purchase one for myself. Wow! What difference that small little tool makes!!! Let me now add in my two cents of advice...if you don't already own a palm nailer...then go out and get ya one!

Hope to have more progress to report on soon...

Jim H.

 

[Megado]

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! We spent the long weekend at the property and made some good progress on the barn.

I rented a boom lift which made things so much easier. Got a great deal on the rental too! Pick it up from the Home Depot in Brenham, TX on Wednesday evening and since they were closed on Thursday (Thanksgiving Day) I didn't have to return it until Friday evening. So basically I got two days for the price of one. Then to top it all off, I ran into an issue with the machine not wanting to rotate so I called HD and they sent a guy out Friday afternoon to fixed it. When he was finished, he asked me if I'd lost any work time due to the issue? When I told him that actually I had, he said no problem...just have the machine back the next day before 4:00 PM and we'll call it even! Awesome!!! So now I got three days for the price of one!!! Say what you want about HD...but in my book, those guys at this particular store definitely earned a repeat customer with their great customer service!

First thing I did with the boom lift was to notch the posts that had twisted on me. As noted previously, this was done to help square up and align the rafters and their support blocks. The pictures below show the process used.

After the notches were made, then came the fun part of flying the upper rafters I had pre-built into place. This actually worked quite nicely and made setting the rafters a breeze compare to lugging them up an extension ladder like had been done previously with the shed rafters.

Once I had the upper rafter sitting on its support blocks, my son would run up the ladder and secure the rafter in place with a clamp until I could rotate the boom lift over to nail it.

We set and centered the two rafters on each end first and then pulled a string between them to align the peaks of the remaining interior rafters. As you can see in the pictures below, we were only able to set three out of the four sets of rafters due to not being able to reach the set above the loft. I'll be able to set those using ladders once I get the floor of the loft in place.

Hopefully more to come soon...

 

[Dano5509]

Thanks for the update on your barn. A lot of us lurkers really enjoy the pole barn construction threads!!

Dano