The Advantages and Disadvantages of Discount Steel Buildings

If you’re in the market for a new steel building, you’ve very likely seen the flyers and advertisements offering discount pre-fab steel buildings. They offer fabulous prices on “discount” steel buildings or pre-fab metal buildings. In many cases, if you check around, you’ll find that those fabulous prices aren’t all that far out of line with the regular prices advertised by conventional suppliers. In other cases, the prices actually may be fabulous – but you may not be getting exactly what you expect. Should you consider buying one of these cheap, discount metal buildings?

A quick look at the advantages and disadvantages of discount steel building operations can help you make the best decision for construction needs.

Advantages of Discount Steel Buildings

There are a couple of obvious advantages to buying a discount metal building rather than a high-quality steel building. The first is price, of course. If you’re not particular about the quality of your new metal building, you can often get low prices on steel buildings made with lower quality steel or building components.

The other possible advantage – and it’s not a guarantee – is speed of delivery. When you order from a reputable supplier of steel buildings, your building will be designed precisely to meet your specifications. It will meet all the building codes for your area – and you’ll know that because you’ll supply them. The design phase is often the most time-consuming part of the manufacturing process. Once the building is designed, the component pieces can be fabricated and assembled for delivery in short order.

The discounted steel buildings offered by many manufacturers are simple, pre-designed steel buildings with no customizations at all. The dealer may tell you that they meet “all standard codes” – but there is no such thing as “standard codes.” Every region has its own building standards that are designed to ensure your steel building is safe in relation to the most common weather and climate events in your region. No simple pre-designed metal building will meet all the building codes for tornado-prone Kansas AND blizzard-prone Maine AND earthquake-prone California.

Disadvantages of Cheap Steel Buildings

As you might expect from the above, the biggest disadvantage of buying a cheap metal building from a discount supplier is that you get a basic box building that may not – or probably won’t – meet the building code where you want to erect it. On top of that, it won’t be designed to support any extra loads, such as suspended plumbing pipes, an HVAC unit or anything at all you want to put on or hang from the roof or the walls. Chances are that you’ll have a very limited choice of colors, unless you’re willing to pay a premium price.

You’ll also lose all the benefits that come along with choosing a high-quality steel building – corrosion-resistant coatings, multiple color options, superior-grade steel and the low cost of maintenance.

If you’re in the market for a metal building, do yourself a favor and stick with companies that provide you with high quality steel buildings from the best manufacturers.