Building a pole barn

Today I'm going to start walking you through one of our most basic structures, a pole barn. A pole barn is simply defined as it's name, an open barn built on poles or posts. This pole barn is 16" X 32" with a metal roof. It's immediate use will be a hay barn & animal shelter during the winter. The farm is about a half hour north of Asheville, NC, and is mainly a goat / sheep farm. We will probably close it in in the spring. The first step of course is setting the pole foundation. After determining our size and square using lasers & strings, we had the Luxury of using a tractor auger to dig the holes. The posts are 6 X 6 and 16 ft long....better to be too long than too short. Starting with two corners, we set each individual post about 2' deep. You'll notice in the pics that we drove 16 penny galvanized nails in the post for added grabbing once the cement set. A 12" X 2' hole requires about 2 - 80# bags of cement. We also used one bag of quick set cement to top it off & didn't even use braces to hold the poles in place. Once the corner poles are set, the side poles just follow the string line about 8' apart. After the first side is set, it's time to move to the other 2 corners. This is very important! At this point, the "square" of the structure is determined. If it's not square, the roof will not look or function properly. That's it for today, Next post will be about squaring methods and starting raising the beams. Please ask any questions or leave comments & I'll do my best to clarify things for you. Until next time, Peace

Tony