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Discussion on Home-made stall fronts .. your ideas please!
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Member:
stek
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Posted on Sunday, Aug 23, 2009 - 3:15 pm:
Hi all, we are working on the design for our new barn, it will be a 36x72 pole barn with 10 stalls, and a feed room and tack room. I am looking for good ideas for home-made stall fronts and/or sliding doors. If you have any suggestions I'd love to hear them! Photos are always appreciated too.
Also any general suggestions/tips/tricks you can offer would be appreciated. One thing I have been kicking around: our plans call for 6x6 pressure treated posts, but I'm wondering if I should go with 6x8 or even 8x8. Your thoughts?
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Moderator:
DrO
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Posted on Monday, Aug 24, 2009 - 3:24 am:
When we build a pole barn we use 6X6 supports but instead of buying a treated single piece of lumber we nail 3 2X6's together. This provides for a straighter piece of lumber that resists warping. Also I have been told (Morton Builders) that pressure treated lumber larger than a 4X4 is prone to not getting the preservative deep into the lumber leaving a center core of wood prone to rotting. I do not know if this is true but have good results with this technique.
DrO
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Member:
stek
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Posted on Monday, Aug 24, 2009 - 7:46 am:
Thanks Dr. O, that's a good tip. You're right about the pressure treated posts, even the 4x4's .. when you cut them you can see the center core is not treated. We were considering doing concrete piers with the mounting hardware that keeps the post out of the ground to prevent rot but they just don't seem as sturdy to me since the mounting block is only set a few inches deep in the concrete. Not sure if our local building code will allow sandwiched 2x6s but I will ask.
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Member:
kpaint
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Posted on Monday, Aug 24, 2009 - 9:13 am:
not sure what mounting hardware you are using, but I'm sure if you use stainless steel anchor bolts (and mounting plate )drilled into the concrete and then a quick set commercial grade epoxy, the bolts/mounting plate aren't going anywhere. That's how we set steel when building large buildings.
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Member:
stek
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Posted on Monday, Aug 24, 2009 - 9:50 am:
Vicki, below is a photo of something similar to what I was thinking. We actually used something like this for our 2nd story deck (except the posts sit on the metal plate flush to the ground and there isn't a bolt going up into the bottom of the post). I can't remember if they were set in place when the concrete pier is poured, or expoxied in after. I'm sure they're completely bomber, I just can't get over thinking that the whole post's security is resting on a couple lag screws just a few inches from the base.. seems like it would be compromised somehow...
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Member:
kpaint
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Posted on Monday, Aug 24, 2009 - 4:49 pm:
Gravity is your friend.
Do you get a lot of wind?
Are the posts susceptible to being hit by a truck, tractor, wagon, trailer etc? Pour concrete pipe bollards around perimeter of post?
Don't know how many posts, what the ceiling load is, how tall bldg is, rebar in the concrete, etc. but steel is always an option. I'll have to look back at the beginning of the thread. I've forgotten.
All of our pole barns are wood/metal siding with concrete floors and are fine, and we get a lot of wind. My horse barn is gambrel roof, 4ft concrete foundation/walls, so I don't have posts. Door frames, but no center load bearing posts...
Suppose the thicker the concrete and the longer the bolt, the better off you are? Are you pouring footers underneath the floor/posts or just setting post on floor concrete? Are you worried about the concrete cracking, the post splitting, etc. and compromising the structure?
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Member:
stek
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Posted on Tuesday, Aug 25, 2009 - 11:56 am:
We weren't going to do a concrete floor (not in the budget right now) but were going to do posts sunk in 4' deep concrete. If we did the post mounting hardware we'd probably do sonotube piers of the same depth and sink the mounting hardware in those.
We get a fair amount of wind, not frequently but probably once or twice a year we get a storm with 60+mph winds. Same with snow (I'm in the Seattle area), we only get it every few years but when we do we get a couple feet of heavy wet stuff. We had a lot of pole barn roofs fail last year due to a big wet snowstorm followed by freezing rains.
I like the no-maintenance that comes with metal but we get so much rain I don't think I could stand the noise.
Probably my biggest concern with regard to the post mounting hardware is earthquakes .. again not frequent but when the next big one hits I don't want my horses trapped in a barn where the whole structure is reliant on the quality of a weld or strength of a lag screw. I've had lag screws shear off in my hand when screwing them in and I just don't trust them...
Granted that's not based on any engineering or real data. I just *feel* better thinking that the supports are firmly planted in the ground.
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Member:
kpaint
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Posted on Sunday, Sep 13, 2009 - 7:02 am:
So Shannon what did you all decide to do? I Googled earthquake proof buildings and found an article about Stanford University engineering discovery. The diagram was for a steel/concrete 3 story structure however. Also found articles after Googling Hawaii earthquake proof buildings...
Does a university near you have an civil engineering/construction engineering school/library?
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Member:
stek
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Posted on Sunday, Sep 13, 2009 - 12:07 pm:
We still haven't decided Vicki. When excavating for the barn site (had to shave off the top of a small hill to make a flat spot) we ran into a huge vein of rock, not sure if we hit beDrOck or if it's just decomposed granite. If it's beDrOck that means we're going to have to put the barn on a foundation rather than post/piers, which was not in the budget.  If that is the case it will be next year before we build. Now we have to dig a couple exploratory holes and find out what we're up against.
I guess the good thing is we know the barn will be on solid ground! One of the things that can happen with earthquakes is they can liquify soft/sandy ground and essentially turn it into quicksand, swallowing what's on top...
Regardless whatever we do will have to be reviewed by an engineer to pass county building code, and they usually call for 10 times more beefy-ness than what is probably required.
That's a great idea about checking with a university library, I'm sure the University of Washington has one. I might even call the school's engineering department and pick their brains. Thanks!
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