Pole Barn Plans With Clerestory Roofs
Reader BRENT in HUNTSVILLE writes:
“Do you have any plans for pole barns with a Celestial Shed Roof? It seems like a great way to allow natural light into the building while being an aesthetic design.” By coincidence, I have a son named Brent!
In architecture, a clerestory is a high section of wall containing windows above eye-level. Its purpose is to admit light, fresh air, or both.
Historically, a clerestory formed an upper level of a Roman basilica or nave of a Romanesque or Gothic church, with walls rising above rooflines of lower aisles and pierced with windows.
Modern clerestories often are defined as vertical windows, located on high walls, extending up from roofline, designed to allow light and breezes into a space, without compromising privacy. Factory buildings often are built with clerestory windows; modern housing designs sometimes include them as well.
Modern clerestory windows may have another especially important role, besides daylighting and ventilation: they can be part of passive solar strategies, in very energy-efficient buildings (passive houses and zero-energy buildings).
To this end, clerestories are used in conjunction with stone, brick, concrete, and other high-mass walls and floors, properly positioned to store solar heat gains during day’s hotter parts – allowing walls and floor to act as a heat bank during cooler parts of day.
Clerestories – in passive solar strategies – should be properly located (typically on sunny side of building) and protected from summer’s sun by rooflines, overhangs, recessed thick walls, or other architectural elements, in order to prevent overheating during cooling season. We have provided numerous fully engineered post-frame buildings with clerestories. Most commonly used are monitor style buildings. We have also done what amounts to two opposing single sloping rooflines, adjoined so as high side of one slope is above upper side of other roof.
DEAR POLE BARN GURU: 
Here is how we did it for my Sales Manager, Dan, in my past life when I was a post frame building contractor. Dan wanted a 30′ x 50′ monitor style building for a garage/shop and then an office above. We had engineered a clearspan roof/floor truss combination for support of wings and second floor. This system had a double truss every 10 feet. At eight feet from each outside wall, we mounted columns to these trusses to support roof of raised center. Joists we placed for ceilings and floor system. With an 8/12 roof slope, upper level used scissor trusses with a 5/12 interior pitch.
DEAR JEFF: While your pdf did not make it, there is no reason you should not be able to have an attached garage, just as you could with any other structural building system. Building Codes certainly allow for attached garages (drive through any subdivision in our country), with appropriate fire separation between it and living spaces.
