Further Down the Highway Author’s Note: This is part 4 of a series of blogs written from a 6500+ motorcycle trip from WA to Ohio and back.  See Blog from Oct. 15th for the beginning…and hang on for the ride! I am the curious sort. I enjoy finding out how other people do things, as […]

We receive more and more requests from clients who want their pole building roofs designed to support the weight of solar panels. While solar panels are a favorite of those who are trying to “exit the grid” and the “green” folks, they pose never before found threats to fire fighters. Fire fighters may suffer electrical […]

Hangars are often referred to as being glorified garages for airplanes. As airplanes and their needs for space and maintenance are as varied as their owner’s personalities, there is no “one size fits all”. Hangars can be as simple as a “shade” pole building, to as sophisticated as a complicated environmentally controlled maintenance facility. Since […]

For those of you who have been following my blogs the past 2 days on T hangars, there is a variant of them known as the nested T.  By nesting the tail sections into the center of the structure, the over-all length of the hangar is reduced enabling the same amount of aircraft to be […]

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 segment.  If you want a quick answer, please be sure to answer with a “reply-able” […]

Not everyone wants to conform to the rigid (and in some cases minimalistic) requirements of a “residential” (according to the Building Codes) airplane hangar. While a bit more work, a Building Permit can often still be obtained. Some permit issuing jurisdictions are tougher than others. In the case of an aircraft hangar which does not […]

My departed ex-father-in-law Carl was a successful hop farmer in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. He and his brother each owned four-passenger Cessna aircraft, and had them in individual hangars on Carl’s farm. Carl’s well-manicured grass strip was one of over 14,000 private airstrips in the United States. While many of these are ancillary to […]

Our daughter, Allison, at 19 is tall….as in 6’ tall. Going through school, she was always the tallest kid in her class. When she was in fourth grade she decided she was going to become a volleyball player, and the height was certainly a plus. Now, I can relate some to Allie, as I was […]

Typically post frame (pole) buildings have a pressure treated board at the base of all enclosed walls. Known also as a Bottom Girt, Grade Girt, Skirt Board or Splash Plank, it is a decay and corrosion resistant girt which is in soil contact or located near the soil surface. It remains visible from the building […]

In the iconic 1984 movie Footloose, Kevin Bacon’s character has moved to the small fictional town of Bomont. As a result of the efforts of a local minister (played by John Lithgow), dancing and rock music have been banned. How outraged the viewing public was when the rights of freedom of expression had been taken […]

I’ve been in the post frame (pole barn) industry for over three decades now, and I’ve never seen the “pole barn” used as a metaphor for anything by the mainstream media. Well, knock me over with a feather, here it is!! Now IMHO (in my humble opinion), the author doesn’t have a true grasp of […]

Latest in post frame design To my loyal readers – thank you very much, your support is greatly appreciated. Many of you may be familiar with my journeys to Ecuador. For those who are new subscribers, our now 19 year old daughter was a Rotary youth exchange student in Portoviejo, Ecuador her sophomore year of […]

Thanks to a High School Student My eldest step-son Jake, started a Facebook Group for students where he taught Physics at Lenore City in Tennessee. One of his students shared this with the group: “Three professionals, a mathematician, a physicist and an engineer, took their final test for their job. The sole question in the […]

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 segment.   If you want a quick answer, please be sure to send from a “reply-able” […]

OK, I was web surfing again! My wife thinks I spend all of my time on the ‘net Facebooking….well, I actually do some real research. I found this post recently on www.garagejournal.com, in reference to a comparison between all steel and post frame (pole) buildings. The poster cited this as why he regrets not having […]

Why Are Humans so Resistant to Change? For something which is built into our human DNA, change is something most humans find uncomfortable. Strange when one looks at the history of evolution – we love new things and we normally like improvements around us. Jumping into the Wayback Machine, roughly 25 years ago, as a […]

Tornado! What We Didn’t Learn in Moore On the afternoon of May 20, 2013, an EF5 tornado, with peak winds estimated at 210 miles per hour (mph), struck Moore, Oklahoma, and adjacent areas, killing 23 and injuring 377 others. The tornado was part of a larger weather system which had produced several other tornadoes over […]

True confessions time (yes, I know people love it when I confess)…..I do not watch television. Gasp. When apparently popular series’ such as “Friends” and “Seinfeld” ended, I truthfully went, “Huh”? Having never seen an episode of either, the events were meaningless to me. It appears I may have been missing out on something…..the DIY […]

Is it a Glulam? Usually the process works this way – check with the Planning Department to confirm the desired building can be constructed on the property, have pole building plans prepared by a registered design professional (RDP – engineer or architect), apply for and be granted a Building Permit, then build. The photo of […]

I’m finishing up the last of my five week trip to Ecuador. I love Ecuador; they have such unique descriptions of things. An example, the house next door to where we are renting is for sale. We took a tour of it, and one of the features of the home was the four car “garage”. […]

I always appreciate unique uses for a pole building. In this particular case, the building is not even one which I had any involvement in either the design or providing of, but it IS unique. Back in 2005, my friends Sheri and Larry Herberholz had an idea – it involved a pole building, alcohol and […]

What is Wainscot? Welcome to our newest feature: 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 segment.  Email all questions to: PoleBarnGuru@HansenPoleBuildings.com DEAR POLE BARN […]

Hansen Pole Buildings’ Designer Rachel asked me today what the best solar panel roof slope? There are three main factors which go in to the calculation of how much sun a roof receives. Roof angle or pitch, roof orientation (how south-facing a roof is) and location. Since Rachel asked about roof slope, I will focus […]

While I have used metal plate connected pre-fabricated wood floor trusses in pole buildings (including one of my own buildings at home), they are not the norm. In the construction industry, much debate has been ongoing in regards to Section R501.3 of the International Building Code/International Residential Code: “R501.3 Fire protection of floors. Floor assemblies, not […]

Thanks to Google, I get Email alerts when new articles appear on line about pole barns. Sadly, far too many of them are from online versions of newspapers and involve fires in horse barns. Usually, but not always, these fires were entirely preventable. My daughter Bailey (https://www.baileymombtraining.com/) is a professional horse trainer and she would […]

Nothing is worse than a roof gone wrong. Leaks frustrate everyone involved, and are usually avoidable. Poor design and poor installation are equal factors in the roofs which just are not happy. Avoid Valleys Designing the roof of a pole barn? Then try to design a roof without any valleys. Valleys concentrate water and often […]