Cost of shed

For basically the same reasons J.O gave above

Crash barriers are also designed for one thing. I don't know whether they'd be sound to use in the roof. An engineer might be able to give a better opinion

Plus the fact that your man is only starting out.

Agree completely... stand them in the ground instead of introducing a structural weakness/point of failure

Yer man sounds like a mullocker....

16' isn't much of a span and I wouldn't be worried about the strength but unless you have them for free is it worth the hassle. How high on top of the walls will the pillars be. Might be easier to go higher with the wall if it's the low side and use no pillars

Put in the floor slab, bolt the uprights to it, then use RSJs as the rafters, short cuts in the structure of the building will only end in disaster, wind loads, snow loads or a tip from a machine could level it.

If you want to save money look at the sheeting. Maybe don't but any concrete walls around the shed, maybe use blocks and building them yourself or look to see if you could get second hand cladding or "seconds" insulated cladding. If you wish to go with concrete walls maybe look at "second wall panels" from a concrete supplier

If you want you can have a look at a similar sized timber frame option I posted over on

Lean-To Shed (Traditional Framing - Douglas Fir) | The Farming Forum

That’s a fabulous shed. Well done!

Would a car life not just have fairly static and predictable loads against it though. At some stage someone is probably bump up against a girder or push dung against it when cleaning out a shed etc. Or even a big gust of wind catching the roof

Most industrial buildings are bolted to the ground, foundation pads are put in place with Rag Bolts in place to hold the base plates, good 9x3 timbers would span 16ft for trusses

I have hundreds of sheds done where they are bolted to the slab and i've yet to see any of them fall!

As long as they are done right of course, standard procedure is to shim up the highest column half inch and shim everything else up level, you're then left with a void under the baseplates where you should shutter and grout them.

Them cones are left in the hold down assembly so you can shift the bolts in the holes to allow the baseplate to fit over them, same procedure with shimming them up and grouting underneath them.

It's handier bolting them and you use a bit less steel

I don't know if it's true but I always do cattle sheds by standing them.in a hole and concreting in.....it feels stronger to me.

I put up a workshop and a smaller storage shed by putting in pads and bolting then pouring floor and iys a sturdy job too in fairness....just don't like yhe idea of driving in with a loader to pick up dung and shoving at ground level where girders attached.....not that they have to be exposed or should be .....

Would be interested to see what others think.....the point at which the bolts fail is well beyond the kind of pressure/force/stress/strain/torsion etc you would put on by taking a run at them with a loader in fairness...then it's how strong is the concrete, how strong is the steel

I suppose I should be more worried about poor quality steel corroding in the **** and piss.....we have an older shed put up with sections of old rail....fabulous stuff...its well over a hundred years old and barely a dusting of corrosion in the worst of conditions

A more recent one with rsjs and paint and a slightly worrying deepish layer of corrosion on the surface...made of shite in comparison to the old rails

You can still see old gates made in that wrought iron style on old farms with almost no corrosion too.....a rusty colour but not depth to the rust....they really don't make them like that anymore (commonly anyway)

I'm doing a lean too, gona go up and over old roof and wer doing a wall at other side with steel reinforcing. Gona bolt rsj to top of this wall.

Absolute messing. And dangerous messing at that.

The shed structure of the shed ought to be designed by an engineer, or at least specified by a supplier of a portal frame shed that was actually properly designed day one. Not a cowboy who is going to guess the design by eye and cobble it all together from scraps of old crash barriers.

Bolting the columns to the tops of the walls would be useless, unless the bolts have serious embeddment down into the wall and are continuous with the reinforcement, which would need to be beefed up under that section of the wall.

From the sounds of your man, I'd say the wind would lift it up off the walls no bother.

What people need to realise, is it a building job and it is all well and good McIvoring things togther on the cheap, but if something goes wrong and there is an accident, the HSA will absolutely crucify you and everyone else invoved in the building. The HSA are ruthless when it comes to enforcing safety in the construction sector. I as state agencies go, they are second only to Revenue when it comes to ruthlessness.

They do not take any prisoners. They will do you for not having appointed PSDP/PSCS, for not having a appointed competent designer and contractor, for not notifying HSA of the project, and do you for not having CE marked structural steelwork. And anything else they can find when they come to investigate an incident.

Engage in yeehaw building work at your peril.

Whatabouterying it away like that won't do much good for you if you're up in front of a judge over an accident.

In this case, competent would mean either a structural engineer with experience of doing agri or portal frame structures, or an experienced farm building supplier/erector who is doing a system/modular buildings that were designed by such an engineer.

If you are building something on your farm, it is your responsibility to ensure that you stay on the right side of the Construction Regulations. As I said, the HSA take no prisoners. They will nail everyone to the wall if they have to come out to an accident.

Trust me, I have seen them in action. They are not a forgiving bunch at all. Like I say, they are on a par with Revenue. They don't just look at the part of the job that caused the accident - they go through the whole job top to bottom and everyone gets their penance for anything not in order, even if it had nothing to do with the incident.

From what I have read on this forum of farm building construction, HSA would have a field day on any of them. I have read all sort of mad sh!t that farmers were DIYing at.