Welcome to Ask the Pole Barn Guru – where you can ask questions about building topics, with answers posted on Mondays.  With many questions to answer, please be patient to watch for yours to come up on a future Monday or Saturday segment.  If you want a quick answer, please be sure to answer with […]

My lovely bride and I have been married for heading on 15 years. To some, this may seem like a lot, to my grandparents and great-grandparents (who were together for 50 years and more) – hardly a drop in the bucket. In most relationships, success (or lack thereof) is created by communication. Lots of clear, […]

“With a Little Help from My Friends” was written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney and released on the Beatles album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967. It was written for and sung by the Beatles’ drummer Ringo Starr as the character “Billy Spears”. Several years ago, we provided pole building kit packages […]

As regular readers know, I’m not a firm believer in the use of precast concrete cookies for footing pads for many reasons. (for further spirited reading on this very subject: https://www.hansenpolebuildings.com/blog/2012/08/hurl-yourconcrete-cookies/) It turns out there are “some” pole building providers who make cookies work on paper, by using an assumed presumptive load-bearing value for the […]

Yes – my readers appear to love my ‘true confessions’ and are kind enough to not overly poke fun at me. Today’s first confession, I happen to not hunt. I believe it was due to the trauma of hunting with my Dad when I was just old enough to be have been potty trained (Dad […]

Welcome to Ask the Pole Barn Guru – where you can ask questions about building topics, with answers posted on Mondays.  With many questions to answer, please be patient to watch for yours to come up on a future Monday or Saturday segment.  If you want a quick answer, please be sure to answer with […]

Welcome to Ask the Pole Barn Guru – where you can ask questions about building topics, with answers posted on Mondays.  With many questions to answer, please be patient to watch for yours to come up on a future Monday or Saturday segment.  If you want a quick answer, please be sure to answer with […]

When It Just isn’t Tall Enough Early in my career supplying pole building kit packages, we provided a building to a client in Oregon for him to house his motor home. Our salesperson really felt he had done due diligence in having the client measure the height of the motorhome before ordering the building. After […]

Don’t get me wrong – in case I have not previously gotten my message across in earlier articles – I genuinely like Building Officials. Most of them really do care, and go out of their way to help both do it yourselfers and building contractors. With very few exceptions, Building Officials, field inspectors and plans […]

If you didn’t read yesterday’s blog – it may be helpful to go back and read about my personal pole building house, inspired by my bride of 14 years. And then, moving on to sharing from another pole barn house challenge: A CLIENT’S EXPERIENCE We have a client in Colorado who has been trying to […]

About a decade ago my bride took a phone call from a potential pole barn purchaser. The female caller identified herself and then said despairingly, “My husband wants me to live in a pole barn house…and I don’t want to live in a barn!” Unfortunately the level of her panic told my wife this caller […]

Welcome to Ask the Pole Barn Guru – where you can ask questions about building topics, with answers posted on Mondays. With many questions to answer, please be patient to watch for yours to come up on a future Monday or Saturday segment. If you want a quick answer, please be sure to answer with […]

Roof Trusses are structural frameworks, generally two-dimensional, whose members are almost always assembled to form a series of inter-connected triangles, Perimeter members of the assembly are called truss chords and interior members are called truss webs. Metal plate connected wood trusses (MPCWT) are composed of wood members joined with metal connector plates (also known as […]

Simpson Strong-Tie® has a blog dedicated to Structural Engineering. A recent post written by David Finkenbinder addressed gaps where a member is attached to another by use of a structural hanger. Here is an excerpt from the blog: “Have you ever seen this famous sign? You may have seen it while riding the London Underground, to […]

At least in my generation we were raised to believe the experts – whether it be doctors, attorneys, or building contractors really knew what they were doing. I know I have the expectation and I believe our clients expect the same from us – as they should. I recently wrote about an article my Uncle […]

Continued from yesterday’s blog….. The Typical House Besides introducing the Japanese to glulam lumber, we worked to promote 2×4 construction. For centuries homes have been built in Japan with 90mm x 90mm (approximately 3-1/2 inches) square posts and beams. The small-dimension materials are not very strong, so the posts are usually only about 6 feet […]

Welcome to Ask the Pole Barn Guru – where you can ask questions about building topics, with answers posted on Mondays.  With many questions to answer, please be patient to watch for yours to come up on a future Monday or Saturday segment.  If you want a quick answer, please be sure to answer with […]

ON SITE IN JAPAN: OBSERVATIONS OF A U.S. FRAMER My cousin Amy was recently visiting Japan and happened to share on her Facebook page an article written by her Dad, my Uncle Neil Momb, written about his adventures in building in Japan. Although my Uncle Neil was the only one of my Father’s siblings who […]

We don’t have network television access out here in the sticks where I live, so we see little TV except for Netflix. Our 19 year-old son Brent was out to visit one afternoon and started watch a program originally aired as a reality TV series in 2010 on the A&E Network. I suppose I always […]

Scott Norwood and Fire Stations My loyal readers are going to be amazed at how I manage to tie these two subjects into relating to pole buildings. To find out, please read on…… For those who are old enough to remember, the 1991 Super Bowl featured the Buffalo Bills and New York Giants. The high […]

As the Nail Turns…. Every once in a while I write something which “touches a nerve” for someone. Here is an, “Ask The Pole Barn Guru” exchange which got an engineer entertained: https://www.hansenpolebuildings.com/blog/2014/06/hangers/ And here is the feedback: “You are very knowledgeable on almost every topic I read, but from one PE to another I […]

Welcome to Ask the Pole Barn Guru – where you can ask questions about building topics, with answers posted on Mondays.  With many questions to answer, please be patient to watch for yours to come up on a future Monday or Saturday segment.  If you want a quick answer, please be sure to answer with […]

eHow.com: Discover the expert in you Or at least how eHow.com promotes itself on the ‘net. From the eHow.com website: “What do you want to do today? No matter what’s on your list, eHow can help. With more than 30 categories that cover just about everything, eHow is your one-stop online resource for life’s challenges. […]

Ondura® We’re always looking for new and different products to solve unique situations. One of those interesting challenges has been roofing which has Florida approvals, as most steel roofing has not been tested, so does not have approval numbers. Attractive and affordable, the Ondura® Corrugated Asphalt Roofing System is ideal for a variety of applications, including […]

After working on Eric’s self-storage pole building – I looked like I had brought a child’s play Star Wars lightsaber to a sword fight…..blood dripping down my face from being attacked by the blunt end of a flying 2×4 smacking me in my right eyebrow! Yes, safety is important, and although my hat was not […]