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 […]

Yes – sliding doors can end up being placed on a roof…..just not on purpose! The photo is of a sliding door on a Morton Building owned by a friend of a Hansen Pole Buildings employee. As this is an older building, it is not intended to be a negative commentary on any of the […]

Back in the day I spent a year working for the now defunct Mac Truss Company in McMinnville, Oregon. Not long after I began working with them, they decided to relocate their manufacturing facilities across town to an old machine shop. All was fine and good with the move, until the fall rains began. The […]

Last summer my friend Shelean and I were visiting my favorite biker watering hole Stateline Cruisers (read more about Cruisers at: https://www.hansenpolebuildings.com/blog/2013/05/pole-building-13/). I was enjoying a tall cold one, when a fellow patron of the establishment approached me and asked if I remembered him. Turns out, I did. Back in the early 1990’s, when I […]

Why are the stick-built and pole-barn businesses so different?  This question was posed to me recently, along with the following commentary:   “Forgive me if this strikes you as a dumb question, but I’m having trouble figuring out why the pole-barn and residential construction businesses are so divided. From what I can tell, companies that […]

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” […]

In 1876, former California Governor Leland Stanford purchased 650 acres of Rancho San Francisquito for a country home and began the development of his famous Palo Alto Stock Farm. He later bought adjoining properties totaling over 8,000 acres. Leland and his wife had only one child, Leland Jr., who died in 1884 of typhoid when […]

I happen to live in what might be classified as “the boonies”. It is seriously out in the midst of the forest. And when in the middle of a forest, if a tree falls down and nobody hears it – chances are it is going to clip a power line and leave me without electricity! […]

Craig Webb to the Rescue Yesterday I wrote about what has become known as the “Lowe’s 2×4” judgment. For those of you who have read the post regarding lumber nominal sizes versus actual dimensions – you’ve probably been left in wonderment over the article! I know I was still frothing over it. Luckily, up came […]

“Unlawfully Advertised’ 2x4s Cost Lowe’s $1.6 million When I first read this story, it was enough to cause blood to squirt from my eyeballs. My reaction was this is yet another case of government run totally amok! For the handful of American adults who have NOT ever purchased or used a 2×4 – the rest […]

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” […]

I’ve driven a lot of nails in my lifetime, literally tons of them. I’d venture there are probably very few adults living in the United States today, who have not driven one or more nails. But how much thought do we actually give to the nails we are driving? Probably not a whole lot – […]