This Wednesday readers “Ask the Guru” about costs of a metal “welded” sliding barn door frame, insulating a building with double bubble insulation to avoid condensation, and a question about our sealed plans for a new building.
DEAR POLE BARN GURU: Double sliding metal barn doors, 10′ wide by 12′ height. Metal welded frame. Appropriate cost please. TIMOTHY in CAT SPRING
DEAR TIMOTHY: Thank you for your interest. Our sliding metal barn doors are screwed together, rather than welded, as this makes for ease of shipping. We do only provide them with an investment in a complete building package – as shipment of only sliding door components would be cost prohibitive.
DEAR POLE BARN GURU: Recently purchased a property with a 24′ x 32′ pole barn. Has a steel roof and walls. Girts and purlins are covered with double bubble. I plan on using this as a workshop with heat and air conditioning to make it more comfortable. The concrete slab has 6 mil poly under it. The interior is completely unfinished. I plan on installing OSB and painting it. But prior to that I would like to add insulation. My concern is condensation. Do I use a vapor barrier, vapor membrane (like CertainTeed), or no vapor barrier on the walls? What about the ceiling? Building has soffit vent and a ridge vent. MICHAEL in LEWISBERRY
DEAR MICHAEL: Control of condensation should always be taken quite seriously.
Provided your building’s double bubble has been properly installed and all seams are sealed, it is a vapor barrier (and a minute insulation, under R-1). In order for your walls to properly dry to building interior, use an unfaced insulation like Rockwool (as it is unaffected by moisture) with no interior vapor barrier. Painting interior of OSB may create an unintended vapor barrier surface.
For your ceiling, once interior finish has been installed, blow in insulation, taking care to leave no less than an inch of continuous air space above it and below any roof purlins or underside of double bubble.
Keep an eye on interior humidity levels, as you may need to mechanically dehumidify.
DEAR POLE BARN GURU: I am building a 40’W X 60’L pole barn with treated 8″ X 8″ posts. I need a design approved with a Pennsylvania seal on it. Do your plans have seal on them? JAMES in McKEAN
DEAR JAMES: Every building Hansen Pole Buildings provides includes site specific structural plans sealed by a engineer registered in the state building will be constructed in and comes with sealed verifying calculations. Our engineers will only seal plans when we are providing materials, this assures materials as specified are actually being provided.
achieved using post-frame construction, most building uses do not have this sort of requirement. In general, it will be far more cost effective to get your 10,000 square feet with a rectangular footprint of 60 to 80 foot in clearspan width. If you are limited, by property constraints to 100 x 100, but do not necessarily have to have a clearspan, a row or two of strategically placed interior columns can assist in keeping your building investment down.
replacement panels with an Integral Condensation Control factory applied and throw away your old double bubble. Please read more here: 
DEAR BEN: Code requires a one inch minimum of airflow across your entire roof surface above batt insulation. Air flowing only at steel ribs would be inadequate to meet requirements. Assuming you have 2×6 roof purlins, 5-1/2 inches of blown cellulose would give you roughly R-19.25. You would be better served by using 2-1/2 to 3 inches (R-17.5 to R-21) of closed cell spray foam applied directly to underside of your roof steel, as it does not have to be vented above.
DEAR KEVIN: Your call happened to be routed to one of our newer Building Designers. Post frame construction is highly complex, with a literal unlimited number of possibilities, this being one your designer was unfamiliar with.
DEAR SCOTT: You actually have several things going on here. First, single bubble reflective radiant barrier will do everything double bubble will, at a far lesser investment. The difference in the minimal R value is a fraction of one! Your building ceiling should not have an additional vapor barrier, you want the moisture from inside the building to be able to migrate through into the ventilated attic space. Blowing in an appropriate thickness of fiberglass or cellulose insulation will be far more effective, probably less expensive and will allow the moisture through. Make sure to have adequate intake at the eaves and exhaust at the ridge to be able to properly vent the dead attic space.
DEAR RICK: Most certainly you can. I have a post frame building on the back of our property outside of Spokane, Washington. The site has 12 feet of grade change across the 40 foot width. After excavating the area where the building would be placed to level, ICF blocks were placed 12 feet high along the southern wall, stepping down with the slope on the east wall, with the other two walls being “daylight” and utilizing traditional columns embedded in the ground. You can read more about my building here: 
