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: Hello! I work for a church and we are currently interested in constructing a pole barn. Our main question is my pastor wants somebody to come in and talk it over with, not over a phone. We are located in Atlantic county NJ. Do you have a sales associate located nearby we could have in to talk to? Thanks! JONATHAN
DEAR JONATHAN: Thank you very much for your interest in a new Hansen Pole Building Church. While we can appreciate your pastor wanting someone with whom he can talk it over with face-to-face, in order to provide those types of services we would have to both charge a fee up front for it – whether your church ever ordered a building or not (like any consulting engineer or architect would), as well as significantly increase the selling price of our buildings.
Our mission is to provide the best possible pole building experience to each and every one of our clients. If it would prove helpful to your pastor, all of our Building Designers have and use Skype with clients to be able to achieve the look and feel of a personal meeting, without the unnecessary expenses. We have done many pole building churches, without ever having a “face to face” discussion, and all turned out beautifully.
Call to schedule a “live” Skype discussion today!
Mike the Pole Barn Guru
DEAR POLE BARN GURU: First, I am located in CDA so saw you used to live here! Anyway, I purchased a piece of property with a newly erected pole barn. I want to insulate and drywall it….for use as my workout/yoga place…yes I know, pole barns were not really meant for such things. I am here and getting all sorts of quotes….but none seem to address what I think is common sense…condensation. Currently there is a condensation blanket between the metal and the horizontal wood 1×6…I think those are called the girts? Anyway, can you direct me to someone who actually knows what the heck they are talking about here? Or can you suggest how I should go about insulating and drywalling so as to not create a festoon of mold and hotel for critters? Thank you so much in advance, MICHON IN COEUR d’ALENE
DEAR MICHON: Actually “pole barns” are totally meant to be used for things such as workout/yoga places. Some proper design in advance between the previous owner and the builder would have made your life far easier. You are correct in your assumption condensation could pose some true issues.
The best thing to do with the walls would be to remove the wall steel (one wall at a time), take out the metal building insulation and install a high quality housewrap. Reapply the wall steel using 1-1/2″ long screws of a larger diameter than what was there previously. Hansen Pole Buildings can supply you with powder coated screws which would meet these structural needs plus the color stays on the screws!
I am going to guess your building has 2×6 wall girts placed flat on the outside of the columns – which probably does not meet code for deflection to begin with. Read why not here: https://www.hansenpolebuildings.com/blog/2012/03/girts/
While you have the wall steel off (in the first paragraph), if the girts are placed flat on the outside of the columns, they could be removed and replaced with what is known as commercial girts (https://www.hansenpolebuildings.com/blog/2011/09/commercial-girts-what-are-they/). This would create an insulation cavity in the walls, plus make the siding stiff enough to meet Code requirements. You can then place batt insulation horizontally between the girts from the inside (I would recommend using unfaced insulation with a vapor barrier on the inside). Then drywall over the inside.
Mike the Pole Barn Guru
