Build a Pole Barn for Animal Shelter: I Built A Pole Barn For Under $3,000
(Page 2 of 6)
February/March 1995
By Ellen Franklin
You can build a roof frame from scratch and cover it with plywood and shingles, but this calls for precise measurements. Faster, easier and cheaper is what I call a "tin roof": galvanized corrugated sheet metal supported by trusses—where horizontal joists, the angled rafters and the supports between them come preassembled. You can make or buy trusses in any size; mine were already made to fit a 24'-wide building, so that's how wide I made the barn. Tin roofing comes in 4'-or yard-wide sheets that can be cut to any length. It overlaps where two sheets meet both side-to-side and end-to-end, so you needn't fuss over the dimensions of the angled "shed" of the roof.
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Still, the magic word for the pole-and-board frame is "square." If you don't start with all measurements accurate and keep every pole vertical, every corner a perfect 90°, and all the roof members plumb and parallel, you are in big trouble when those factory-perfect rectangles of tin roofing do not fit your off-shaped building.
I dug most of my postholes in all the wrong places the first time around and had to dig them over. Finally, I learned to start with a stake in the center of where I wanted the barn. From that center point I set stakes at each of the four corners. Regardless of the size of your barn, you can be sure it is square if you make each letter in the following diagram the same length as all the corresponding letters and set corner stakes at each point.
You can be certain that each of your corners is an exact 90° by making a pattern out of wood slats or cardboard. Nail (or glue) the strips of material into a triangle that is 3' by 4' by 5' on the outside edge. The corner produced where the 3' and 4' lengths join is exactly 90 degrees. Check each of the corners of your foundation against this gizmo and save it for future use.
Now lay 8' boards along the sidelines of the stake-and-string outline where the posts will go. At the ends and where the 8-footers meet will be where you sink post-holes (see the diagram bellow). Dig your holes to below frost level in cold country—at least one third as deep as your walls will be high. Here in New Mexico, winter nights are cold but the ground does not freeze deep, so for 8' walls, I trimmed my poles to 10'8" and made the holes 2'8" deep. Our brick-adobe soil is hard as rock, so I didn't dig an inch deeper than I had to. If we built nearer the sand desert where upper layers of soil can be loose, I'd have dug the postholes at least half the posts' above-ground length.
A tractor-powered posthole auger is easiest, but if your land is soft, you can dig with a clamshell handdigger (in brick-adobe it is easiest to pour water in the hole repeatedly, let it soak up and muck it out in layers). To keep the poles from leaning over time, you should disturb the natural compaction of the soil as little as possible, so make the holes as near to the width of the poles as you can. Using a string level, stretch a level string line along the outside edge of your holes so that your poles will go into the hole without disturbing the string line. Measure the depth of each hole from the string to the bottom of the hole and ignore the level of the ground. In desert country, dig each hole 2 inches deeper than you need and pour 2 inches of concrete in the bottom. Let it set for one day. Where ground is moist enough to rot wood, dig hole 6" deeper than needed and fill with crushed rock for good drainage. It is also a good idea to coat the bottom of your post with roofing tar in areas with high subsoil moisture. Tamp well.
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