How to: Pitch Break from Steeper to Flatter with Steel Roofing Pitch breaks occur at a transition between steeper (towards peak) and flatter roof slopes (towards the eave). Exercising care, this will be a painless and leak free area. Lots of things are going to occur at the junction between the two roofs. In order […]

Innovation Requires Failure Recently I read a Harvard Business Review article written by Dorie Clark which contained this, which spoke to me: “Recognize that innovation requires failure. In a world where competitive advantage is increasingly short-lived, as Columbia Business School professor Rita Gunther McGrath has described, successful companies have to bake innovation into their standard […]

When Plans Examiners Try to Apply the “CODE” to Pole Buildings Today’s example happens to come from the State of Michigan, however it could happen in any Building Permit issuing jurisdiction in the U.S. What is most interesting to me about this particular example is, last November I was invited to be a presenter at […]

Galvanic Corrosion with Aluminum Soffits John Minor was introduced to me by his father-in-law, my now long deceased partner, Rod Sevy back in 1993. A personable young man, John went to work for us selling pole buildings and became quickly both successful and knowledgeable. With a bit of wanderlust in his system, among those John […]

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” […]

The One Simple Secret to Pole Buildings Which Stand Up HINT: It has nothing to do with how it is built! Regardless of what anyone pays for a new pole building, whether investing in a complete kit package, piece mealing it together, or having it constructed – the general idea is to have the building […]

How Do I Make It Taller? One of our clients called in earlier today as his builder is beginning construction of his new pole building kit package. He has invested in a 14’ eave height building, and while his tallest door is 10 feet high, he has now decided it may be important to have […]

Does Anyone Else See How This Could Be a Problem? Eric, one of the owners of Hansen Pole Buildings, had me check out a website today for a pole building supplier who is extolling the virtues of a particular “nailed up” laminated column, which has been the subject of some discussion in my articles. https://www.hansenpolebuildings.com/blog/2014/04/titan-timbers/ […]

This question was posed to Justine, who gets everyone’s wonderful materials to their pole building sites for Hansen Buildings: “Justine, pardon me for being confused but: If the tops of glulam posts were manufactured that way to allow cutting, why are they not all that way?  There is no rhyme or reason to them. Some […]

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” […]

Friday’s Pole Barn Humor Just follow along here….. A client wrote for Technical Support: “I have had the roof and insulated walls on for quite some time and am currently enjoying an almost complete pole building. Just yesterday I installed the two sliding doors with a friend. This leaves only the trim to be completed. […]

In my fledgling days in the pole building industry, we jumped on board when ASC Pacific began offering “Twice the Life” Zincalume® coated steel roofing panels as an alternative to bare galvanized. Keep in mind, back in the early 1980’s almost every roof was unpainted – so this was huge! One side benefit of Zincalume® […]

Our oldest daughter Bailey gets mentioned pretty much in most articles I write which include horses. As a National Champion as both a rider and a trainer, she has seen plenty of horse barns. As a teenager, she mucked stalls – at the facility she worked at, they had over 40 of them. None of […]

More Ways to Cut Steel When I owned M & W Building Supply in the 1980’s, for a plethora of reasons we would end up with extra sheets of steel roofing and siding. Sometimes it would just be a quantity error on a takeoff, other times clients would just plain change their minds. As people […]

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” […]

There is absolutely nothing finer than a recommendation from one of our clients on a tool, process or procedure which they have used to make construction of their new Hansen Pole Building kit package easier. A challenge, for many, is having to cut steel panels and trims with various sheet metal cutting tools often being […]

Do we grow enough wood to build a significant number of new wood framed buildings? Most people have the belief the world’s forests are shrinking. They are worried about a lumber shortage. This is one of the marketing ploys frequently used by producers and builders of non-wood framed buildings. A Yale University-led study published in […]

A Hansen Pole Buildings client recently called his Building Designer Rick. The client was concerned as three ply glulams were provided for his pole building kit package, instead of the 4×6 and 6×6 solid sawn columns which were on his plans.  He is concerned his inspector will give him trouble about this and would like […]

WMP®-VR Faced Metal Building Insulation Strange, unusual or uninformed requests are part of the territory when it comes to the world of pole buildings. Just today we received this statement as part of a request for a quote on a building kit package: “I would like to line the entire building with MBI (2″ fiberglass […]

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” […]

You Will Never Look at a Horse Barn Aisleway the Same Again Most of our equine inclined horse owner clients do not own horses which are worth more than the average house. In fact, most recognize it is not how much (or little) they have paid for their horse (or horses) – the real expense […]

In the early 1980s steel covered pole buildings started to make the move from the steel panels being fastened with nails, to being fastened with screws. At the time I owned M&W Building Supply Company, in Oregon and Farmland Structures (owned by Jim Betonte) provided erection services for the clients of ours who needed to […]

How to Attach Interior Wood Stud Walls to Pole Building Concrete Floors As a child I grew up living in the last house in the neighborhood – the road went from asphalt paved to dirt at the end of our lot. My father was a framing contractor, and true to the adage – a builder’s […]

How to Get Building Code Approval for Something New Some folks have the idea Code approval is something easy. Well, not so much….but there is a quicker and less costly approach than what most folks might have initially envisioned. The information below was provided by Qualtim (www.Qualtim.com), and at the least gives some insight into […]

DEAR POLE BARN GURU: My school district has two adventure courses on our property. One has been up for approx 20 years. It is made with telephone poles. We are concerned that the poles may be in need of replacement. How would we know? Is there testing we could have done? ROWING ON LAKE RONKONKOMA […]