Tag Archives: the ultimate post frame experience

What Hansen Pole Buildings Offers for Prospective Barndominium Owners

What Hansen Pole Buildings Offers for Prospective Barndominium Owners

If you are considering building a barndominium or shouse (shop/house), whether DIY or with a contractor’s involvement, there is one very important question to ask:

“Do you personally live in a barndominium?”

If you do not receive a resounding, “YES” for an answer, you may want to rethink your choice.

My lovely bride and I have lived in our Hansen Pole Building along South Dakota’s Lake Traverse for 15 years now. This being my third personal barndominium, dating back some thirty years, I can speak with experience few others can.

Hansen VisionAt Hansen Pole Buildings, we are literally “All About the Building” and we strive to provide “The Ultimate Post Frame Building Experience™”. Every single one of our fully engineered post frame buildings is custom designed to best fit our client’s wants and needs. Rarely will we be least expensive, however we will always provide a best value solution.



This process ideally begins in infancy stages, with a determination of fiscal reality – highly tempered by individual tastes and how much effort one is willing or able to put into their new home. Those willing to be their own General Contractors can plan upon saving roughly 25% over hiring a builder to turn key and 50% for DIYing as much as possible. We have found any physically capable person, who is willing to read step-by-step directions in English can successfully erect their own beautiful building, and many do. We have even had septuagenarian couples do their own construction!

Most often a DIY barndominium turns out with better results than one could ever hire done – because you truly care about how it turns out.

Once a budget has been established, it is time to ‘find the dirt’. Without knowing where your barndominium will be located, it is impossible and impractical to determine how your new home should be planned. Important aspects such as direction of access, curb appeal and views play into a well thought out design.  Directional orientation is important, with heat loss or gain determined by location and number of windows, as well as design of shading from overhangs. Slope of site determines needs for significant grade work or placing upon a full or partial basement or crawl space.

Moving closer to actuality we provide direction and encouragement in determining your family’s needed spaces, sizes and orientation to each other. Work from your home’s inside rather than trying to fit what your needs are into some pre-ordained space. With this information in hand, we offer a potentially free, professional floor plan and building elevation service to take all of your ideas, wants and needs and actually craft a floor plan best melding them with realities of construction.

Whether you have utilized our plan service, or have a plan of your own, your Hansen Pole Buildings’ Designer will work directly with you to make recommendations to provide a home most practical for you. You have total choice over a virtually unlimited number of aspects. Your being directly involved eliminates builders taking advantage of you in order to pad their bottom line. Hansen Pole Buildings does have a unique Instant Pricing™ system, allowing your Building Designer to make changes and have a near instantaneous answer as to what your investment will be as various dimensional and feature changes are contemplated.

We are very conscious about design for energy efficiency. Power is unlikely to ever become less expensive, so getting at or as close as possible to a net zero design is paramount.

Need financing for your new barndominium? We work with several lenders who actually understand post frame barndominiums and can assist with this phase.

After your building order has been placed, it moves from your Building Designer’s desk to our design team. Before going to one of our skilled draftspeople every building comes across my desk for personal review – mostly in an aspect of what will or will not work structurally, Building Code compliance and how to increase building efficiency without compromising functionality.

Once your structural building plans are completed, you get to review them for accuracy prior to our independent Registered Professional Engineer going over every member and connection as a final assurance of structural soundness. Only after all of these steps have been completed are your engineer sealed plans, along with verifying structural calculations, sent to you to acquire necessary building permits.

Even if your jurisdiction does not require building permits, structural plan reviews or do inspections, having engineer sealed plans is your assurance of structural adequacy. There are insurance companies who give discounts to those who build fully engineered homes, so ask your agent for yours.

You have access through our online portal to follow your building’s process, reschedule build dates, report any damaged or missing materials, as well as requesting unlimited technical support from those who have actually built post frame buildings.

Even after your barndominum is complete and you have sent us digital photos of your beautiful new home, our commitment to you does not end. Hansen Pole Buildings provides a Limited Lifetime Structural warranty covering your home and regardless of how many years you have had your building, should you have questions or concerns, we are available to assist.

Best Agricultural Building Supply Company

Best Agricultural Building Supply Company – Midwest USA

The awards just keep rolling in as Hansen Pole Buildings has been named the Best Agricultural Building Supply Company in the Midwest USA by Build-News! Now we would like to believe we do a pretty fair job at providing “The Ultimate Post Frame Building Experience™” to our clients, so it is even more gratifying to be recognized as such by the construction industry.

Whilst Hansen Pole Buildings provides a plethora of buildings for various uses – from residential to commercial, industrial to storage, the roots of our industry lie in the agricultural market.

Now agriculture comes in many shapes and sizes, especially here in the bread basket of America.

Last Saturday I was riding my motorcycle in a charity poker run, through miles upon miles of field of corn and soy beans. Each of these crops is grown on over four million acres of land here in South Dakota! And, in both cases, our state does not even rank in the top five producing states! Where South Dakota does rank Number One is in the production of alfalfa, sunflowers and hay. We are also in the top five for flaxseed and oats.

All of these crops require machinery – with an average machinery value of $250 an acre. The risks and costs of mechanical breakdowns are huge, and can be reduced by the investment in farm buildings large enough to get expensive equipment out of inclement weather. Not only is this a practical solution from a storage standpoint, but also for being able to do regular service and maintenance.

South Dakota is also a major player in livestock industries – bison, cattle, sheep and hogs put our state in the top ten for each of these.  Each of these has their own unique needs for post frame buildings.

And, even though it is currently not legal in our state, South Dakota’s Number Nine cash crop (according to www.norml.org) is marijuana! The great majority of which is grown in pole barns. While we do not condone illegal activity, as laws from state to state are gradually changing, it may behoove those of you who are interested in expanding into this field to do some advanced research: https://www.hansenpolebuildings.com/2016/03/marijuana-grow-barns/.

Regardless of what you are farming, if a post frame building is part of your future plans, we are here to help get the most value out of your building investment.

You Can Lead a Horse to Water…Pole Building Garage

Several years ago, when Hansen Pole Buildings was a fledgling company, I worked with a client in Goldendale, Washington assisting him in designing what (in his eyes) would be his ideal dream building.

My mission has always been to deliver the “Ultimate Post Frame Building Experience™”, which is greatly helped by clients who are open minded and willing to listen to why their idea might not be the most practical.

steel-garageThis particular client needed a four car garage – simple enough sounding. In his mind the building would be 36 feet wide and 48 feet long, certainly plenty large enough to park four vehicles in.

However it was HOW he wanted to park the four vehicles which posed a challenge!

His idea was to have two overhead doors, which would be 16 feet wide. Two cars can and will fit through a 16 foot wide overhead door, provided one is careful.

In this particular case – the client wanted to place the two overhead doors side-by-side on the same 36 foot endwall.

I explained why this might prove to be a challenge, drive in car number one on the far right, park and exit the driver’s side door. Repeat with cars number two and three, moving progressively to the right with each car.

Now, drive car number four in and hope there is a sunroof, as there is no room left to swing the driver’s side door open without hitting the wall!

I also tried to express how important having ‘wall room’ is – as a place to hang things on, or lean things against. If your garage is anything like mine, every available inch of wall gets used!

Well, I did make a noble effort, however my pleadings feel upon deaf ears.

The client wanted his building, his way.

About a year after the client had completed the assembly of his building kit, I got a call from him. He loves his new building and confessed I was absolutely correct in both of the things I cautioned him about.

In reality, he would have ended up a far happier camper with a building 40 to even 45 feet in width. This would have allowed him to comfortably park his four cars, be able to swing open doors without door dings and have given him the wall space for stuff!

One of my favorite sayings goes like this…” You can lead a horse to water… but you can’t make him drink.”

Five Reasons to Buy a Pole Building

Sales and marketing….to some the thought of at least one of these is absolutely chilling.

SALES

There, I said it. It amazes even me how challenging it can be to get clients to engage with our Building Designers.

agricultural-pole-buildingI realize it is frightening to think – your problems might be solved or goals able to be attained by investing in a product which you both want and need – a new post frame (pole) building.

I am fairly politically incorrect, so I am keeping this simple, here are the FIVE THINGS which must be present before you will make a commitment to move forward.

  1. Do you have the money? If not, can you be financed? Hansen Pole Buildings has long term financing programs available to many people who are credit worthy. If you don’t have the money and can’t borrow the money, there are some challenges for you to face.
  2. Do you have a bleeding neck? A bleeding neck is a dire sense of urgency, an immediate problem which demands to be solved. Right. Now.

Luckily our post frame building kits packages deal with something which involves one or both of the following: a) Pain and great inconvenience, loss of money, threat of loss, and/or b) some craving for pleasure which borders on the irrational.

For most folks, a pole barn is the solution to Door “A”. Getting tired of – one or more of: your spouse nagging, things getting stolen or ruined due to weather, theft or vandalism (you are getting the drift). “B” would be my sudden craving for the ultimate man cave!

If you’re not in a hurry, you’re not writing the check today. Some clients lack a sense of time. Don’t want to scrape frost this winter? Then get moving NOW, or the same pain you experienced last winter, will be there this winter.

  1. Do you buy into our Unique Selling Proposition?I hear of folks trying to sell features all of the time – what size posts, girts, purlins, whatever. All of these things are merely pieces of a huge puzzle, your new pole building.

But they aren’t the benefit to you, the building owner.

For the non-marketers amongst my readers, a unique selling proposition (USP) is our unique answer to these questions:

  • What does your product do which nobody else’s product does?
  • Why should I buy from you instead of anybody else?
  • What guarantee can you make which nobody else can make?

We deliver “The Ultimate Post Frame Building Experience™” repeatedly, every day.

“We give you back your sanity, by helping you protect your valuable possessions in your own professionally designed custom building, with a 100% satisfaction guarantee and the industry’s only limited lifetime structural warranty.”

Pretty.  Much.  Covers.  It.

  1. Do you have the ability to say YES?If your spouse, relative, religious advisor or anyone besides you gets to make the call on moving forward – get them involved with the Building Designer, the sooner the better.
  2. Do the buildings we provide fit your overall plans?If what we do required major brain surgery on your part, you ain’t gonna take what we offer unless brain surgery is literally a lot less painful than the ugly alternative. Whatever building solution we arrive at needs to harmonize with natural, existing forces—both on the inside and outside of your world, not ours.

We look forward to discussing your building needs.