Self Storage & Twas the Week Before Brent Landed….. For regular readers – you read yesterday about my son joining our volunteer construction crew on the 5040 square foot self storage building. In the week before Brent’s arrival, we experienced some of the fun things which will endear anyone who has ever constructed their own […]

Children are interesting – especially as they arrive at adulthood and we start to truly recognize what “genes” they have inherited. My Dad was a builder and his father before him was a builder as well – not much question I had inherited the “builder gene” from them. Our nearly 21 year old daughter Allison […]

The following article appeared in the Madison Journal Today (Madison County, Georgia) June 7, 2014: “Madison County commissioners plan to exclude pole barns, carports and lean-tos from permitting requirements.  But working out the policy on making this happen has not been an easy matter. And the board will once again discuss the issue at its […]

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 […]

Mike the Pole Barn Guru is taking the day off from answering Pole Barn questions  – to enjoy the weekend with his 19 year old son. He will be back Monday with more Pole Barn Guru questions and answers.   Email all questions about pole building construction to: PoleBarnGuru@HansenPoleBuildings.com Have a great weekend everyone – […]

Being on the road roughly ½ of the year, I stay in hotels. A lot. Before booking my next room, I always try to get the latest skinny on reviews from TripAdvisor®. Once I get settled in, I also use the TripAdvisor information to help select eateries which are nearby. I do take reviews with […]

Some days it seems there are nearly as many possible design solutions for pole barn “poles” as there are pole barns! Here is a brief overview of the organic (think coming from trees) ones. For the sake of brevity, I will limit this article to only applications where the columns are embedded in the ground. […]

CHALK, CHALK, CHALK As kids, we grew up as the last house before the street surface changed from asphalt paving to dirt. Unlike today’s children, whose parents can buy “sidewalk chalk” in a myriad of colors, we improvised. Whenever a new home was being drywalled near us, we would scrounge for scraps of sheetrock. As […]

I thought it to be very timely to be sitting down to write articles about hangar doors and to have the Construction Magazine Network email me with an advertisement for Hydroswing® Hydraulic Doors. Having never dealt with Hydroswing®, I began my research by checking out their website (https://hydroswing-hydraulic-doors.com/). I have to admit, I am a […]

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 […]

Last October I was bemoaning sliding doors as a design solution for airplane hangars. At the end of the article (https://www.hansenpolebuildings.com/blog/2013/10/sliding-hangar-doors/) I threatened my loyal readers with some other alternatives. This past week, one of our clients asked us about putting a 38’4” wide by 12’ tall Horton Stack Door on a Hansen Pole Building, […]

Here is the picture – pole building with a 16’ eave height. (For details on how eave height is defined read: https://www.hansenpolebuildings.com/blog/2012/03/eave_height/) Said building has a partial second floor (mezzanine), with the top of the floor at nine feet above grade. Deducting the six inch thickness of the roof system, leaves all of 6’6” of […]

Unless one has grown up on a foreign planet, they are probably familiar with Hertz® Rent-A-Car. My lovely bride and I rent lots of cars (usually for about 50% of the year), so we are intimately familiar with Hertz. Hertz is not only #1, they also are nearly everywhere on the face of the Earth. […]

My family and I live on a lakeshore in the woods Northeast of Spokane, Washington – about six miles from the nearest state highway. When our youngest daughter Allison was probably four – we were driving almost to the state highway. A new business had put up its sign. Allison, wanting to show off her […]

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 […]

A prospect client in Michigan wrote to tell me pole buildings were, “too expensive, going with a box beam barn instead.” Two thoughts leaped into my head, first – pole buildings are so efficient it is hard to believe there could be a more economical choice, and secondly – what the heck is a “box […]

I consider myself to be a pretty good cook. Certainly I am no Emeril Lagasse from “Emeril Green”, but I can hold my own. Through experience, I’ve become fairly proficient at being able to throw a meal together, using whatever ingredients are at hand. My bride continues to be dumbfounded by my seeming inability to […]

For those of us in the post frame (pole building) industry, Rural Builder magazine is a must read. Published seven times a year – I always await receiving my Rural Builder in the mail with a degree of anticipation and excitement. I have probably not missed reading (and rereading) an issue in three decades. Until […]

I have a very dear friend who tends to avoid possibly challenging situations, by pretending they didn’t occur. This is known as the ‘Ostrich Syndrome’. Post-frame, as an industry, sometimes suffers from some of the same ailment. I present, for your entertainment pleasure, International Building Code (IBC) Section 1807.3.1, which may very well be both […]

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 […]

Tuesday afternoon I had to get from Cape May, New Jersey to Lewes, Delaware. The choices were a very long circuitous drive, or to take the ferry. Being from the Pacific Northwest, I am used to ferries, they take millions of passengers annually on a myriad of routes across the Puget Sound. I am also […]

My regular “day job” is as Technical Director for Hansen Pole Buildings. This is a fancy title for, “the guy who solves problems when things go astray”. DIYers are frankly hilarious, as they come holding hat-in-hand saying things like, “You wouldn’t believe what I’ve done wrong, it has to be the worst mistake ever!” In […]