Because it's steel.... Stronger, lower maintenance and better resale value. Also, lower insurance premiums in some cases, fwiw.
Building a building in my backyard for a shop seeking advice
- Thread starter urbanrifleman
- Start date
joshb
Gold $$ Contributor
The guys that do them put them up fast, especially the smaller ones.
Last fall, I was thinking about doing a shop. A little 2 bay garage type steel building priced in at about the same as the cost of lumber, siding and roofing for the same size structure. The steel building price was “erected”, meaning they put it up. You get steel siding and steel roof. Pretty much bug proof and non combustible.
I was doing my own pad, which is the easy part.
hoz53
Gold $$ Contributor
Ive got a 40x48 on an industrial zoned seperate lot I built 10 years ago. Im sure glad i got it, but if i was putting a building at my house I would build it attached to the garage and right out the back as far as i could build it to the zoning setback line. very handy. walk from shop to garage into house. increases value of house. it could be remodeled into living space at later time. On the other hand you may want a seperate living space for the Mother in Law
Sniperhandle
Silver $$ Contributor
I don't know the type you are, But my shop is packed full, Go as big as you can afford, You would be surprised how fast it will fill up and you will wish you would have gone bigger. If I had known this inflation was coming on hard like this I would have added on like I wanted to, Now it will cost me twice as much if not more and I should have done the addition I was wanting to do. I got a quote of $18,000 to add 30x15 to the east side of my shop. Coulda woulda shoulda, I would be lucky to do that for $40,000 now and it might even be more.
Sniperhandle
Silver $$ Contributor
Even the price of Sea Containers have gotten stupid, I wish I would have bought a couple more of those too!
LVLAaron
Gold $$ Contributor
and you can find a dozen contractors to put up a steel building in no time. Good luck finding a GC to build a stick structure
LVL
I have been watching this thread. There is a reason you can find so called contracors to put up these steel buiildings in no time. They suck, workers get paid on how many get done each year. QC is non existent. Read your contract.
Tim Gonnerman
A subject that could take pages of discussion. I'll tell a little of mine as it is now. It's taken over 20 years to get to this point. It's setup for fabrication and machining. 2 lathes,1 knee mill, 1 3in 1. Welders and pretty much every kind of cutting tool. I've began scaling down over the past couple years.
40x60 w/15x60 mezzanine. 16' ceiling on wide side and 10' below the mezz. Mezz has 8' ceiling. Full bathroom, heated floor. Heavy duty DIY 2x4 shelving along one long wall. Washing machine for shop clothes. 8x20 "clean room" with built in benches on 3 sides. More storage over the clean room.
3 3.5x8 stationary heavy wood benches with large drawers and 1/4 steel tops. One 4x8 extra heavy duty rolling all steel bench (I've put 10k pounds of steel on top of this one ), one 2x4 rolling bench. Vices on most benches. Half dozen file cabinets and a couple of 5' tall microfiche cabinets. Lots of storage is a good thing! 15' rolling gantry crane.
Two large surface mounted breaker boxes, one on each long side. all power run in surface mounted rigid conduit. all 120v outlets are 20a commercial grade and most are home runs to the breaker box. air comp installed high up, air hard lines with lots of drops and water traps. Lots and lots of inexpensive ceiling mounted LED daylight bulbs.
I'd like to have an annex for some wood working tools I use occasionally and keep in a connex outside.
40x60 w/15x60 mezzanine. 16' ceiling on wide side and 10' below the mezz. Mezz has 8' ceiling. Full bathroom, heated floor. Heavy duty DIY 2x4 shelving along one long wall. Washing machine for shop clothes. 8x20 "clean room" with built in benches on 3 sides. More storage over the clean room.
3 3.5x8 stationary heavy wood benches with large drawers and 1/4 steel tops. One 4x8 extra heavy duty rolling all steel bench (I've put 10k pounds of steel on top of this one
), one 2x4 rolling bench. Vices on most benches. Half dozen file cabinets and a couple of 5' tall microfiche cabinets. Lots of storage is a good thing! 15' rolling gantry crane.Two large surface mounted breaker boxes, one on each long side. all power run in surface mounted rigid conduit. all 120v outlets are 20a commercial grade and most are home runs to the breaker box. air comp installed high up, air hard lines with lots of drops and water traps. Lots and lots of inexpensive ceiling mounted LED daylight bulbs.
I'd like to have an annex for some wood working tools I use occasionally and keep in a connex outside.
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butchlambert
Site $$ Sponsor
I guess that I was lucky on 2 metal building builds.
This is a fact , once soon a time my father had a 50-100 pole barn put up by an Amish crew …..needless to say he was regretting this decision for a long time . You get what you pay for !
I like metal buildings best. I just built a new carport/boat storage/reloading room. 50x70 structure with a 16x50 insulated boat storage area, and a 12x12 reloading room. I hired out the crew to build the building, and handed them a scaled drawing I engineered, and they sourced the products I requested and put it up in 12 days. They only messed up one thing, they hung the walk through doors out swing, when they were supposed to be inswing. I simple request to them in spanish had that resolved in an hour. I darn near built it myself, but decided my personal time was worth more than the $7.00/sqft they charged for labor. They did great, square, plumb, no leaks. On the reloading room, im doing that myself, the carpenters around here are several months out. Its framed and wired, just need more time lol.
joshb
Gold $$ Contributor
Yup! There are good Amish crews and bad Amish crews. I used an Amish stone mason for my block and stone for 30 years. Best crew I ever worked with. I hired a Amish roofer, one time, and fired him on the second day. Hired a Russian/Bosnian crew and they were great. Used them on all my roof jobs for ten years.
I laugh when people tell me “They’re Amish, they must be good and honest.” Don’t believe it!
When you hire anybody, get references!
I guess I didn't say anything about my construction materials. The shop is rough sawn "post and purling". 4x6 posts on 36" centers with 2x4 on 24" purlings. Capped with engineered trusses. Outside sheeted w/osb and inside sheet rocked, fire taped and painted white.
The posts and purlings came from trees in the property. Walls were framed, sheeted and stacked. Then we brought in a crane to stand the walls and set the trusses.
The posts and purlings came from trees in the property. Walls were framed, sheeted and stacked. Then we brought in a crane to stand the walls and set the trusses.
DRK
Silver $$ Contributor
There are a lot of crooked Amish men. Plenty of hard working and honest ones too, but like all people, a very small minority who are crooked.
urbanrifleman
Site $$ Sponsor
Sniperhandle
Silver $$ Contributor
Damn Straight Skippy!
You can come close, plenty of Mennonites in Oklahoma.
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