Even if you've heard the term, you might not know what differentiates a barn with poles from other types of buildings. The fundamental difference is that barns with poles are not built with a traditional foundation. Instead, a series of posts are placed on the ground at specific locations to create an informal base. A pole barn will use conventional-sized lumber, while a wood-framed barn requires heavy wood, which is much larger in size.
With a wooden frame, you can choose your wood species, from pine to hemlock and Douglas fir. VTW works mainly with Douglas fir. A pole barn uses wooden beams or “posts” buried in the ground as the main support structure for exterior walls and roof trusses. A barn is a metal building built on a concrete base, while a pole barn only needs posts to support it.
While barns come pre-cut and drilled, barn materials with posts are cut and drilled on site. Barndominiums are built with metal instead of wood, so they require no maintenance. As foundation posts move, a pole barn may need to be straightened out every five or seven years, a process that can cost several thousand dollars. While it may seem that a grandominium is perfect in every way, it has several disadvantages, including its construction cost compared to a pole barn.
Pole barns don't need to use wood for frames, and when using steel instead of wood, pole barns require virtually no maintenance. Barns with poles can catch fire if a fire breaks out somewhere inside or outside near the building, such as a bonfire, if wood is used to build the structure. Essentially, then, the difference between a pole barn and a stick-framed building comes down to their respective structural systems: their bones. Options such as larger overhangs and even major additions are easier to build with posts or columns in a pole barn, rather than upright walls in a stick-framed building.
People who ask about barns with poles may be imagining predesigned metal barns to build and simply using the wrong term. The pole barn design is based on methods of construction with pole frames, which include posts or posts that are buried in the ground and used to support the barn. I never thought about building a barn with poles until the other day, when a colleague of mine suggested that I study it. When building a metal building, such as a barn, a concrete base must first be placed, which gives the building a solid and stable foundation.
In fact, it is an important factor for any type of building in which the barn with poles is being weighed, since the structure of the barn with poles involves an economical construction method called post-framing construction. Pole barns, or pole buildings, are general terms for a type of structure used historically for agricultural needs. Most barn kits with posts include all the wooden posts as support beams and a metal housing for the outer walls.
