Nationwide® Insurance and Common Pole Building Failures As my loyal readers know, I recently attended the NFBA (National Frame Building Association) 2014 Expo in Nashville, TN.  The NFBA (https://www.nfba.org) is the only national trade association which represents post-frame industry professionals. The association is the country’s primary source of post-frame building resources, research, networking, news and […]

Timber Technologies Titan Timbers vs. Littfin Truss Nail-lam Columns – The battle continues One of the exhibitors at the 2014 NFBA Expo was Timber Technologies, LLC of Colfax, WI. Timber Technologies is a full-line glulam manufacturer of Titan Timber columns and beams for post-frame buildings. Their Titan Timbers are straight, strong, reliable, easy to cut, […]

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” […]

ADDED BLOG DAY!  Due to a large volume of questions to the Pole Barn Guru, we are adding another day for answering questions – so look for more Pole Barn wisdom from The guru on Saturdays – starting – today!  Welcome to Ask the Pole Barn Guru – where you can ask questions about building […]

Long ago, in a Galaxy far away…..no not Star Wars, but one of my “past lives” in the 1980’s at M & W Building Supply. It was an early Fall Monday morning – the first day at work for my then brother-in-law Jimmie Ballinger (Jimmie and I were married to sisters). Jimmie had decided he […]

Planning Department – Get Permission First, Don’t Beg Forgiveness Every once in a while I read a story and it just makes me wonder, “What were they thinking”? The story below appeared February 25, 2014 in a Post-Tribune article written by Kitty Conley: Variance granted for pole barn already under construction  CROWN POINT — The […]

Off The Grid A fair number of our clients, who construct their own pole buildings, have the pioneering spirit which made the United States a great country. They want to be as independent as possible, and avoid having to deal with governmental agencies as much as possible. Freedom, in the “Land of the Free” is […]

My Dad and Uncles were framing contractors. My male cousins and I all worked for their business (Momb Enterprises, Inc.) at one time or another, typically during school summer breaks. The first task on any new jobsite was my cousin Kim hanging up the infamous “MEI Slaves” sign. My Uncles, especially Lyle and Gil, were […]

NEW FEATURE: ADDED BLOG DAY!  Due to a large volume of questions to the Pole Barn Guru, we are adding another day for answering questions – so look for more Pole Barn wisdom from The guru on Saturdays – starting – this coming Saturday, March 29th! Welcome to Ask the Pole Barn Guru – where […]

The phones ring at Hansen Pole Buildings every day from dawn-to-dusk, and sometimes both before and after. Some calls are a little more interesting than others. Bright and early, first thing this morning Eric (one of the owners of Hansen Pole Buildings) gets a phone call from Lowe’s®. It seems Lowe’s® has a pole building […]

I really, really enjoy interactive clients. The ones who pay attention to what is going on (chances are, if you are reading this, you are one too). They help keep me on my toes, as well. I’ve been enjoying interacting with John. Over the weekend he came up with this for me: “I looked at […]

When I was a freshman in Architecture school at the University of Idaho, we watched video footage of the November 7, 1940 collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge (also known as “Gallopin Gertie”). If you have never seen this amazing footage before, you can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-zczJXSxnw Luckily, most of you will never watch […]

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” […]

When Four Sides are Less Expensive than Three Imagine, if you will, a balloon. If the opening is shut, it is pretty hard to blow any more air into it. Open it up, blow into it and it expands as the air pressure on the inside is increased. Now picture a pole building with one […]

Whether a DIYer, or a building contractor, there are two primary methods for acquisition of materials for a pole building kit. There is the “old fashioned way”…. Someone roughs out a building plan, generally without the ability to do structural engineering calculations to determine if what is in “the plan” will actually carry the climactic […]

At Half the Price… Every once in a while there is an exchange with a potential client which I cannot resist sharing. This one is about pole barn prices…at half the price of! In this particular case, as the request came in at 7:39 a.m., I was afterwards wondering if the inquiry came after a […]

When I was first constructing pole buildings, I found out the hard way why it is essential to have a clause in my agreements which covered the unknown – also known as “what you can’t see below the surface”. In my case, we had contracted to build a 36 foot wide by 60 foot long […]

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” […]

Guest Blog today by Eric Graff, owner of Hansen Buildings~ Every day Hansen Buildings is hard at work coordinating the deliveries of multiple pole buildings to different site locations across the US. With over 3,000 individual pieces involved in an average size pole barn, this is not an easy feat. Curious how this works? I […]

Client calls into my office at the end of the day Friday and says his Building Official will only accept his new pole building construction with holes 48 inches deep, with six inch thick concrete cookies in the bottom of the hole, and no concrete backfill around the columns. Here is some background…. The building […]

True confessions…..we love them, we watch reality TV, we read tabloids, and inquiring minds just want to know! Yeah silly as humans, aren’t we? Well…..I drink. A lot. Of water (LOL – expected something tawdry, right?)!! On a typical day I will guzzle down at least a gallon of it. Most nights I wake up […]

While this time tested adage was designed to make sure lumber, siding, etc., gets cut correctly the first time (which is often the only chance), it is even more applicable – BEFORE ANY MATERIAL GETS DELIVERED? OK…..you may be thinking time has finally caught up to the Pole Barn Guru….the marbles are rattling around a […]

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 National Frame Building Association (NFBA) began 45 years ago when a group of Midwestern post-frame (pole) builders gathered in Chicago to mount a challenge to pending changes in the Indiana building code which would have threatened the post-frame industry. This group, along with interested engineers and architects, was able to prove the structural reliability […]

I’ve come to face a reality – the great majority of people are dimensionally challenged. And it is OK if you might be one of them. I’ve worked with dimensions and sizes of all sorts and shapes since I was a teenager swinging a hammer (and being go-fer) on the buildings my Father and Uncles […]