The Most Frequently Asked Questions About Steel Buildings

You’ve heard a lot about steel buildings lately. Chances are that someone in your neighborhood has erected a metal building in their backyard, and it’s almost certain that you’ve seen a variety of metal buildings in use as factories, industrial buildings, garages, workshops and barns somewhere in your town. If you’ve been considering erecting a steel building on your property, whether for storage, a home office or any other reasons, you probably have some questions about the process. These are the questions that manufacturers of steel buildings hear the most often.

Can You Really Build a Steel Building Yourself?

That sort of depends on who you are. Generally, if you know how to use an electric drill, have a few friends to help with heavy lifting and can follow a schematic or diagram, you can probably erect most small steel buildings yourself. Unless you’re a contractor with experience pouring concrete, however, you should probably have a professional pour the foundation for your building if you want to make sure it has a solid base on which to stand.

How Do I Know the Building Will Meet Local Codes?

When you order steel buildings from a reliable, reputable provider, you’ll be asked to provide the engineers with a copy of the building codes from your local code and building office. Your metal building will be designed and engineered specifically to meet those codes and standards. The engineers will provide you with engineer’s renderings to present to your local building authority for approval. If you’re not familiar with the process, a good steel building supplier can walk you through it – or you can hire a general contractor who can handle all the details for you.

Can I Put Up a Metal Building Anywhere?

That depends a lot on your local laws. Some cities and counties only allow steel buildings in certain zones. Others allow them anywhere, and others don’t allow them at all. In many cases, your city zoning authority will decide whether you can erect a metal building on your property based on its size, design and purpose.

What Kind of Design Choices Do I Have?

Once upon a time, smaller steel buildings came in one style – Quonset buildings, the hoop frame structures that became popular after the world wars. These days, there are many different styles, including those with domed roofs, peaked roofs, and semi-peaked rooms, and those with curved walls, half walls and full-height walls. Steel buildings are also available in just about any color you want, so you can match it perfectly to the other buildings on your property.

Steel Buildings Dos and Don’ts

So you’ve decided that a steel building is the perfect solution to your storage needs or the new garage for your car. Before you jump in feet first and put down a deposit on the first metal building with a price you could love, get to know a few dos and don’ts about steel buildings.

Don’t Believe Everything You Read

Yes, many people can erect their own steel buildings with little help and only a few standard power tools, but that’s not always the case. Before you decide that you can save a bundle by putting up your own metal building, check the details. Your local government may require, for example, that structures that are bigger than a certain size must be erected by a licensed contractor. Check everything before you put down a deposit.

Don’t Be Rushed Into a Decision

Some steel building suppliers are more interested in doing volume sales than in providing good service. Watch out for high-pressure sales tactics. If the salesperson tries to tell you that you can only get this special price if you put down a deposit or make a decision today, walk away. A reputable dealer of metal buildings won’t pressure you with sleazy tactics.

Do Figure Out Exactly What You Need

The clearer you are about your needs, the more likely it is you’ll get a steel building that fits them exactly. Before you contact a dealer about a steel building sit down and figure out how you’ll use it so that you can answer those questions when the dealer asks you.

Do Shop for a Knowledgeable Dealer

The dealer you buy your building from will be working with you throughout the ordering process, so take your time to find one who is willing to answer your questions and treats you with respect. Research them online before you reach out and ask for an estimate so that you’re sure you’re dealing with a reputable and honest dealer.

Do Take the Dealer’s Advice

When you do find a knowledgeable dealer of steel buildings, be ready to take his advice. The dealer wants you to be satisfied with your new building, so he’ll go out of his way to make suggestions for changes and options you should consider. You don’t have to accept all of his suggestions, but do give it some thought if he suggests, for example, that you choose a building a few feet wider. Industry research shows that most buyers actually need about 20 percent more room than they originally think they want.

Steel buildings for residential use

Steel buildings are increasingly popular for residential uses, such as garages and home workshops, agricultural uses, such as barns and equipment storage structures, and commercial uses, from airplane hangars to riding arenas. There are many reasons that metal buildings are so popular with so many people. Here are just a few of the benefits of choosing a steel building for your building project.

Strength

Steel has the highest strength-to-weight ratio of any construction material – up to 25 times the strength of wood. That makes steel the ideal building material for lightweight, durable structures that can withstand harsh weather events, the ravages of time and natural disasters.

Fire Resistance

Steel is naturally fire resistant, but most metal building components are further treated with fire retardant coatings to make them even more impervious to flames. This can be a major concern for those using steel buildings in commercial applications, where they may be housing a lot of electrical equipment and machinery. An added bonus to the fire resistance is the lower insurance costs you’ll get because of it.

Weather Resistance

Steel buildings don’t erode like concrete or masonry, nor do they rot like wood. In fact, most steel buildings will resist corrosion and rust for decades, thanks to the high tech method of powder-coating all exposed components with a protective layer of corrosion-resistant paint, which also adds color to your metal building. The paint job on most metal buildings is guaranteed for up to 20 years.

Environmentally Friendly

Because steel used for metal buildings is mostly recycled, it doesn’t have the same negative effect on the environment that wood does. It is also 100% recyclable, so it can be used in future projects rather than contributing to the waste stream when your steel building reaches the end of its useful life. Other environmental benefits of steel buildings include:

-          Steel doesn’t release pollutants into the air that treated wood products often do

-          Steel buildings are often better insulated than wood and masonry structures because they are engineered to fit so tightly at the seams. Thus they require less energy to heat and cool

-          Steel buildings get a higher sustainability rating according to the LEED criteria developed by the US Green Buildings Council

Affordability

One of the most influential factors in the choice to use steel for building is the cost. Steel is generally among the least expensive alternatives for construction, and it continues to save money for building owners throughout its lifetime in lowered maintenance and insurance costs.

Steel buildings are and will continue to be the most popular choice for nearly any type of building project you can imagine. Whether you’re considering a new garage or a factory building, consider the many advantages of building with steel.

Design Options for Steel Buildings

Once you’ve decided that a steel building is the best option for you – and across the country, steel buildings are increasingly popular as garages, barns, storage buildings and home workshops – the real fun starts. You get to make design decisions, and there are a lot more of them than you’d expect. From the basic style to the roofing options and accessories, there are many ways to customize steel buildings.

The Basics

The basic design and configuration of your steel building may be determined in part by the building codes and standards put out by your local building office. Keep in mind that all metal buildings must meet basic code standards for safety in your area. Those will include the tolerances for load-bearing, wind loads and more. Based on your intended use and your local building codes, one or more of these styles may not be appropriate for your building.

Quonset Buildings

Quonset buildings use an arch frame construction, with sloping walls and a rounded roof. It’s among the most stable of all building designs, but some areas may not allow them because of appearance.

Arched Steel Buildings

There are a number of variations of Quonset buildings available, varying largely in the slope of the roof and the height of the walls. You may choose from steel buildings with straight sides and an arched roof and steel buildings with straight walls and a pitched roof.

Lean-To

Lean-tos are popular options for carports and greenhouse additions. They generally are built to attach to the side of another structure and can be a less expensive option than a full-size steel building.

In addition to these styles typically used for residential and agriculture-use steel buildings, there are a number of designs that are popular for industrial and retail use. They include symmetrical gable metal buildings, with a single centered roof ridge, asymmetrical gable metal buildings, also sometimes called double-slope buildings, and sloped roof buildings, where the wall is higher on one side than the other, and the roof slopes from side to side.

Steel Building Roof Design

The most common type of roof for steel buildings is a standing seam steel roof. They’re easy to install, less expensive than most other roof materials and will often last 20 years with no maintenance.

Doors and Windows

Your steel building will come with the window and door openings cut, but you’ll generally have to order the doors and windows separately. You can choose from pedestrian doors, barn doors and overhead garage doors, or any combination of them. Windows and skylights can make your building more energy efficient as well as more attractive.

Steel buildings are no longer just squat metal boxes. You’ve got a multitude of design options from which to choose to customize your building to your liking.

Important Considerations When Buying Steel Buildings

Steel buildings are among the most popular choices for people who are building garages, barns, storage buildings and other small buildings on their property, as well as larger steel-framed buildings used as factories, warehouses and retail stores. Before you choose a steel building for yourself, however, there are some important things to consider.

Local Building Codes

One of the most important factors that will influence nearly every decision you make about the metal building you choose – including whether or not you can erect a steel building – is your local building codes and standards. Before you start looking at steel buildings for your property, check the local building codes office to find out what standards your structure will have to meet. Some urban and suburban areas actually don’t allow steel buildings at all, though that’s rare. More commonly, there will be specific standards your building will have to meet for wind load, snow load and other engineering factors. In addition, the local building codes may rule out certain areas of your property as building sites – most cities and towns specify how far structures must be from property lines, frontage and other boundaries.

Affordability

Decide how much you can afford to spend on your metal building, and don’t forget that it should include labor and erection costs, as well as finishing costs. That will give you a starting point for negotiating a price on a steel building that meets your needs. Shop around, and don’t be taken in by fake “sales” and “closeout specials” – most people in the industry agree that they don’t exist. That doesn’t mean you won’t find a wide variation on prices for steel buildings – but don’t expect to find one that’s available at half the price of others. If you do, be very suspicious.

The Process

Before you dive into buying a steel building, research the process so that you understand what to expect. It’s not like going to your home improvement store and picking out a plastic or fiberglass storage shed. Each piece of your building will be custom-engineered and the whole package will be delivered to you ready to assemble. Understanding the process will help you avoid being scammed and ensure that you get the structure you actually expect.

As with anything else, the more you know about steel buildings and the process of buying and erecting them, the more equipped you’ll be to get a good deal, and the more likely it will be that you get the style and type of building that suits your needs.

Interior Upgrades for Steel Buildings

It’s fairly well-known that steel buildings are affordable, green, versatile and durable. However, many people don’t understand that the price you’re quoted when you inquire about metal buildings doesn’t include any type of interior finishing. The price for your steel building will generally include the girts and cable bracing needed to make the frame, the exterior wall components and the roof panels. Most also include a trim kit or finish kit, which will cover the places where the walls butt up against each other and the roof seam. Some may also include gutters and exterior trim. The interior of your steel building, however, will be, well, naked. What you’ll see from the inside is, essentially, the inside of the outside with all the bones that hold it up. This is true whether building steel barns, garages, workshops or even a mother-in-law apartment or guest house. Even before you start considering interior décor, though, there are options that can pretty up the insides of steel buildings for fairly low cost.

Interior Liner Panel

The most common of these options for steel buildings interiors is an interior liner panel. These panels are metal panels designed to fit the inner shell of your new structure and cover the skeleton. You can purchase inner panel liners in the same gauge as your exterior, or opt for a cheaper gauge of steel for the interior shell, since it won’t have to stand up to the elements that the outer shell will face.

Partition Walls

Want to divide up your metal building into smaller rooms? Need a sectioned off area to use as an office or storage room? You can order partition walls from your steel building manufacturer. The partition walls are generally made of the same materials as the end walls of steel garages and steel barns. You can specify the height and length of the walls and have the outer walls designed with channels to hold the interior partition walls.

Mezzanine

A second level in your metal building effectively doubles your available floor space. In a steel building, the second level is referred to as a mezzanine. It can extend across the entire structure, or be designed as a loft overlooking the main level. A second level inside your steel building can provide storage space in garages, office space in workshops or a bedroom loft if you’re building a residential space.

These are options that can be designed into steel buildings, and are always easier to add when they’re actually built into the design from the start. When you  talk to a steel building supplier or manufacturer, be sure to ask about interior options before getting a price quote.

Steel Buildings Aren’t for City Slickers

Steel buildings have picked up a reputation for being urban and gritty. Steel is used to build skyscrapers and factories, warehouses and parking garages. But steel buildings are not just for city slickers. In fact, the market that has seen the most growth in the metal building industry is in the field of steel buildings for agricultural use. This shouldn’t surprise anyone – after all, it was farmers that adopted Quonset buildings when they came back from the World Wars overseas and put them to work in peace time – an almost literal translation of the concept of beating swords into plowshares. And it should come as no surprise that farmers, who have long known how to raise barns without hiring an expensive contractor, are among the biggest consumers of pre-engineered steel  building kits. The fact is that steel buildings just make sense for use as horse stables, barns, equipment storage and livestock housing. From chicken coops to grain silos, steel buildings are often the best choice for farmers.

Steel buildings are more durable than nearly any other type of construction. Because they’re made of recycled steel, they’re nearly always more environmentally friendly than wood barns, especially in areas where building wood is hard to come by, and because they are custom engineered to meet the building code standards of the area in which they’ll be erected, farmers can be sure that their new metal building will stand up to the strong, sweeping winds, heavy snowfalls and other weather and natural event disasters that can devastate a stick-built barn in a heartbeat.

That’s important when the building you’re putting up with be housing expensive equipment. A demolished building generally means the loss of tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of tractors, plows, harvesters and more. And if the steel  building will be used for livestock housing, it’s even more important to choose steel buildings, with their strength, durability and safety standards.

In addition to structural considerations, though, steel buildings are also the ideal choice for livestock housing for another reason – they’re easy to insulate for climate regulation. Steel buildings are designed with vents and insulation cavities to guarantee a climate that’s comfortable and safe for farm animals.

Farmers also choose steel buildings because they’re low-maintenance. There are enough tasks to do on the property without having to fit in time to scrape and repaint a barn, or replace structural beams and planks that have rotted or been infested with pests. Steel is resistant to all of those things – and is non-combustible to boot. Since those risks are reduced, farmers also will see their insurance premiums reduced when they choose steel buildings to house equipment, animals and grain or produce.

Save Big with Do It Yourself Steel Buildings

Whether you’re building a garage or storage building, home office or workshop, steel buildings are often the best choice for your needs. One of the biggest reasons that so many people choose steel buildings for small residential construction projects is affordability. Steel is one of the most affordable building materials you can use, so even those who opt to have garages, barns and workshops erected by experienced contractors will nearly always save money on their new building. If you have experience with DIY building projects and know your way around basic power tools, though, you can really save a bundle when you buy a pre-engineered metal building and erect it yourself.

What Makes Steel Buildings So Affordable?

Metal buildings combine durability with affordability. In addition to being built from very affordable materials, steel buildings are lightweight, strong and resistant to fire, termites, splitting and rotting. They can withstand extreme weather conditions without sustaining major damage. As a result, you’ll spend less on maintenance for your new steel building than you would if you chose a wooden structure instead.

You’ll save money on construction costs in a number of ways. Steel buildings don’t require deeply dug foundations for stability, so unless your local building codes require differently, you’ll nearly always get by with a far cheaper cement slab foundation. This is the one place where nearly every expert recommends bringing in a professional. The cement slab will be the base of your building, so it’s vital to get it perfectly squared and level, and to install the anchor bolts in the right place. Hiring a professional contractor to pour the foundation will probably be your biggest expense – and, in most cases, will only take a day or two to complete.

Hate to paint? You’ll love steel buildings. Most of them come with a colored powder coating that will wear like iron, won’t fade, prevents rust and corrosion and lasts for 20 years or more. You can say goodbye to the scraping and painting – and expense – required to keep your building looking great.

Finally, you’ll save on insurance costs. Remember all those things that make steel buildings so safe and low-maintenance? Your insurance company loves them, too. Insurance companies base premium costs on risk. When you choose a metal building, you’re practically eliminating the risks posed by fire, storms, floods and pests, which means there’s far less chance that your insurance company will have to pay out a claim for any of those damages. The low risk means a lower premium, which you’ll enjoy year after year after year.

Still not completely sold on steel buildings for your construction project? Take a little time to go online and check out the pictures of modern steel buildings, which have come a long, long way since the days of Quonset buildings. Once you see how great they look, your objections will fade away.