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” email address.
Email all questions to: PoleBarnGuru@HansenPoleBuildings.com
DEAR POLE BARN GURU: Are your buildings as good as a Lester Building? SLIVERS IN CEDAR RAPIDS
DEAR SLIVERS: I like to think of it as, “Is a Lester Building as good as a Hansen Pole Building”?
I personally know many of the management team of Lester Buildings, they are good folks and build a quality building. They do NOT specialize in providing easy to construct pole building kit packages for the average DIY consumer.
If you are looking to do some or all of the work yourself, our Construction Manual with its over 400 pages of descriptions, drawings and actual photos of every step of the construction process is nothing short of artwork. No one else offers anything like it.
Many of the great features of Lester Buildings are going to be the same as what we offer. There are going to be some significant differences which, in my humble opinion, make our buildings superior, to any other pole building kit, Lester’s or otherwise.
All of our engineered non-commercial building kits come with a Limited Lifetime Warranty. You’ll not find this anywhere else.
We do not believe in the use of concrete cookies, for good reason. Read why here: https://www.hansenpolebuildings.com/blog/2012/08/hurl-yourconcrete-cookies/
Other than in very narrow column spacings, “barn girts” do not engineer out: https://www.hansenpolebuildings.com/blog/2012/03/girts/.
Hansen Pole Buildings uses “bookshelf” style girts in most instances.
We tested the industry “standard” painted screws for attaching steel roofing and siding and found, they didn’t work! See why here: https://www.hansenpolebuildings.com/blog/2012/08/this-is-a-test-steel-strength/
So we took the specially designed “diaphragm screw” and had them powder coated! This means no paint to chip off.
Lester Buildings are typically designed with sidewall columns every ten feet for non-engineered buildings and eight feet for engineered buildings. The Hansen Pole Buildings double truss system, allows for a standard sidewall column spacing of 12 feet with the ability to go even wider. This affords wider door openings, without the need for costly (or space consuming) structural door headers.
Hansen Pole Buildings utilizes 2×6 and larger roof purlins (for spans over eight feet), hung between the trusses using engineered Simpson hangers, not smaller purlins over the tops of single trusses, relying upon a six inch long screw driven the long direction through a 2×4 on edge and into the top of a truss.
In summary – if you like a Lester Building, you should love your new Hansen Pole Building.
Guru, I bought a Lester Bldg. and just weeks ago paid an Amish Crew from Graber Bldgs. to fix the mistakes and poor workmanship on it. Lester Bldgs. shorted me on roof dripstop and exterior plywood and engineered the exterior of my building incorrectly. They recommended one of their Lester Dealer/Builders, C&C Construction who did the poor workmanship on my Lester Bldg. Things like (8) roof purlins not nailed at all which would explain why on windy nights it sounded like my roof was going to blow off. Gaps/openings in my roof valleys where wind had blown my attic insulation away and cold wind was finding its way into my furnace plentum/duct work, rain coming in too. 25 roof leaks 3 weeks after they left town that I fixed myself where they missed the roof purlins with their screws. Bird blocks not installed and the ones that they did install were not nailed, I personally screwed everyone of them off. A lot of the soffit only had one staple holding it on and the staples had bent trying to go thru the soffit only allowing 3/8″ to go into the facia board. Facia boards barely on the trusses and nails missing the truss, we had to sister boards on the sides of trusses. We found this type of poor workmanship thru out my Lester Bldg. Before I paid this Amish Crew to fix my Lester Bldg just weeks ago, I called the Lester Regional Manager out, who was shocked by my building problems, but after he spoke to Lester Upper Management, he said that Lester does not feel any responsibility for my “Building Issues”. So I paid the Amish to fix my Lester Bldg. After I turned Lester into the Better Business Bureau they put most of the blame on their Lester Dealer/Builder, C&C Construction, who is definitely at fault for the poor workmanship, but Lester is at fault too for first, providing this Lester Dealer/Builder to me telling me he did “Good Work”, and shorting me on dripstop and shorting me on Plywood and incorrectly engineering the exterior of my building.
Robert ~ I am deeply sorry you had a bad experience, it reflects poorly upon our industry as a whole. In general, Lester has a very good reputation, so I am hoping your experience was the unfortunate exception to the general rule. Hopefully your finished building will meet your needs and perform admirably for decades to come.
My dad has been talking about getting a pole barn done, and it got me curious. I like that you talked about how you should love a pole building, which I think would be good to know. I’m going to have to look for a few good pole barn companies and see what we can find!