Post Frame Construction Pros + Cons

welcome to Marshall remodel I'm Paul and on today's show we're gonna talk about post frame construction I've been getting a lot of questions that I think I can answer in this video the series I'm doing right now is the mad thirty build series which is a post frame home that I'm sitting at right now is actually my home that I'm constructing and I'm gonna go through in this video what post franklin frame construction is what the basics of it are how it compares to stick frame construction what are some pros and cons to it is it right for you is it not right for you and I'm gonna go through why I chose it so let's jump into it [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so the first thing you should do if you're considering folks frame construction is go to your local county where you plan on building and see if it's even allowed in a lot of places in this country post frame construction for the use of a residence is not allowed where I came from in Illinois I lived out in the country and they just the county just wouldn't allow it and I think that's from a lack of knowledge of post frame and the lack of residents that are actually built using poles frame construction it's definitely an up-and-coming thing and I think we're gonna see a turn in that but to save yourself some time you might want to just go ahead and check with your local county to see if they will even allow you to have a residence with that kind of construction the second thing you need to consider is if you have to secure a mortgage for post frame construction you need to seek out a bank and find one that will do an in-house loan if you have a good you know relationship with your banker you know you probably have a good chance the problem with getting a loan for a post frame home is there is no secondary market for those mortgages so banks can't go out and find the best deal and sell that mortgage to another company so they have to it has to the time it has to be an in-house loan so that's the second thing you need to think about when you're gonna build a pulse train construction now in my case I knew that was going to be a problem so I I saved up to build my home with cash and I bought my I got a mortgage for my land so that's how I dealt with that but that's just something that's you know obviously going to be a pretty pretty big deal if you can't secure mortgage for your your post frame construction another thing to consider is resale and I think this is going to change in the course the next five ten years but resale might be a little more difficult because again there's there's just not a lot of comparisons for banks to lend money for them so they're they're kind of lean they're kind of scared to to loan money to people so that might you know hurt the sale of your home it might lower the price a little bit in my case I'm not really worried about it because we're building this house to stay here obviously if that changed I feel like it's going to be a nice enough place and the area we are in this country it's definitely on the rise and there's getting to be more knowledge about post frame homes so I don't feel like there's gonna be a problem selling it so just keep that in mind if you're gonna build it and you think you might sell within five years that might be something you want to consider maybe do a little research in your area to see if it's something that is harder to sell maybe check with some Realtors and stuff like that all right the next thing I want to talk about with post rebuilding is the actual construction of it and I've been been getting a lot of questions on you know will this building our home withstand wind and in weather and my answer to that is yes these are engineered buildings and based on where you are in the country they are engineered to withstand the requirements that are set forth for construction so in my area I believe these buildings are engineered to withstand 90 mile-an-hour consistent wind which is pretty good pretty good in this area now if you're in southern Florida they might not even allow this at all because they might not be able to build these strong enough to withstand that I don't know that's uh something you're gonna have to check with your your local area I know in the Midwest these buildings have been used for tractor storage and farm use for years and years years and they are engineered the trusses the posts the whole building is an engineered to withstand the weather that in the climate that you live in so yes they will stand up to the weather where you live now if a tornado comes and runs right over it it's not going to stand nor would any other building unless it's build of complete concrete it's it's just is sturdy and as strong as a stick frame home and I don't think you have to worry about it being able to withstand the weather now understanding that when you go to build a post frame building this is the first one I've ever built from scratch now I've put metal on him before and stuff like that I wanted to build one for myself before I built any barn or post frame home for anyone else so I could work out all of the little nuances and little things you learn the first time you do something and I'm confident that this house is going to be very very strong and very durable but when you're thinking about having somebody build it you want to find somebody that is knowledgeable about poster and construction and that is going to build it the way they're supposed to be built using the proper nails all that kind of stuff so just keep that in mind now going in to the actual construction of a post frame building there's basically in my there's basically six components to build the structure you have your footings you have your posts or columns you have your Gertz which are the boards that attach all your posts together you have your trusses and then you have your purlins and then you have your steel now when you frame up your building it's not gonna have a ton of strength it's gonna have a lot of flexibility until you put that steel on it once you put that steel on it that locks it all together and there if you do if you go and talk to a post frame supplier every one of them's different and it's important that you find out the specifications for each specific post frame a builder and engineer because their specifications might be a little different than somebody else's which I found out with my roof steel which I'll talk to you about in a later video on the mad county bill series so let's talk about the footings there's there's I think there's four or five ways you can put footings down typically these buildings were originally built where you just drilled a hole in the ground or dug a hole in the ground you want to get below the frost line where I'm at is 42 inches I try to get mine 48 to 4 to 5 feet basically in the ground but typically the way these buildings are built they just took the post they put a round kind of creep pad at the bottom of the hole and set the post in the hole and push the dirt back in and that is what holds your post so that's one method another method that was used quite a bit when these first started being built is they would put a footing pad at the bottom put the post in and then they would fill it up with cement that is definitely something that has not done that much anymore and I would not recommend that way out of any of them because moisture can get in between that concrete in that poles that post is going to shrink and expand with weather and humidity and water and over time it's it's gonna it's going to rot that post pretty quickly the third way is a perma column a perma column is basically a post whatever size post you have but the bottom 4 or 5 feet of it is concrete it's a concrete that's precast and it's supposedly like 5 to 6 times stronger than normal concrete and then the post attaches to the top of it these are used a lot for companies that want to come in they want to dig the hole they want to get their posts in the ground and get building right away they're a great option they keep your post out of the ground it doesn't you know slow the Builder down at all having to wait for the concrete to set up before he can start building another way this is becoming pretty popular is plastic sleeves and these are sleeves that go over the post where it is in the ground so it protects it from moisture and the elements and the last one is with what I used is pouring footings round footings and then putting a wet set bracket which your post attaches to and that keeps your post out of the ground and it is an extremely extremely strong connection and if I was to build this building build a building or a post frame home for somebody I would definitely recommend that and I don't even know if I would do it any other way because this it does it is a little bit more labor because you have to wait a day before you can start building but it's a pretty pretty structurally sound you know you can guarantee your post isn't gonna rot and they're pretty beefy so if I was going to give you any recommendation I would say pour round footings with wet set brackets that's my opinion take it for what it's worth the second part of a post rain building is going to be your columns or your posts so the way post frame building works the posts so either a six by six post or a laminated column is used for the strength of these buildings and the the Gertz attached to these posts or columns and that supports the weight of the walls and and the roof so all that weight from the rough and the walls is transferred into those posts down into your footing and into the ground that's how these buildings support themselves laminated columns in my opinion are the best way to go there are two by sixes primarily they're laminated together either a three ply or four ply depending on how tall your posts are the great thing about laminated columns is they're extremely straight and true they're easy to work with a lot of times they'll put metal reinforcement in them in between plates to even strengthen them even more and then there's huge bolts through bolts that go through your wet set bracket if you choose that that that bolt them together and they're extremely strong now I will talk about Gertz you'll see a lot of post frame builders in this country up they use 2x4 Goertz versus two by six years I would definitely recommend 2 by 6 curves and I think most of the the upper end post frame builders used 2 by 6 skirts the bottom Gert should be a treated I used two by twelves on mine that extend down below the ground and we're getting it will talk into more about that bottom part of your building in a little bit but so the Gertz are what tie all the posts together and keep all your spacing your trusses and think this is one trusses or one thing that are awesome on these posts frame buildings your posts are typically spaced at 8 feet on center I think 8 is pretty standard I think that's a good spacing it worked for work for me now a lot of these built builders are engineers when they design your buildings your side wall posts will be spaced at 8 feet and then a lot of times your end wall will be spaced at a greater distance I wanted mine all 8 foot on center so I requested that when I had my building designed so my posts are 8 foot on center the entire way around my house and my garage but as far as the trusses go you can with post frame buildings you can get free span trusses up I think they all go up over a hundred feet and you know obviously when you get up to that high they're gonna be double trusses and they're gonna be I mean they're gonna be giant giant trusts but you can free span the biggest building I've ever seen freeze span is like 80 something feet and that's one of the reasons I chose post frame is because I wanted a really open-concept home I wanted a really high ceiling in one part of my house and I could span the full 48 feet with my trust with no load-bearing walls and it wasn't an issue so that's another great thing about their trusses is they're engineered to free span whatever the width of your building is and typically though trusses will sit on your column or your truss or your post I like using the laminated columns for the fact that you can take that middle one in the middle two by sixes out and you can set your trust right in the middle of that column and it sits right on top of the post and it just makes for a really secure connection strong connection you put put some ring shank nails in there and then you run it through bolt through there and that that is really strong and you're gonna have it be it take a really strong wind to rip those trusses off of your off of your columns and then on top of your trusses you'll run purlins and if you have eight foot on center trusses your purlins are going to be two by fours and they're going to be set on end and they have to be set on end at eight foot spacing so they have the strength and typically they're two foot on center and then your steel gets screwed into your purlins now if you've seen a building with the the purlins laid flat it's probably because in between the eight foot on center posts they've put another trust so they've had they have headers that go from post to post and then they set another truss in the middle so if you get down to four foot on center and your trusses I think that's when you can run your your two by fours flat it makes it a little easier screwing your steel in and hitting your purlins but eight foot on Center is plenty strong I had some other questions about the windows how does the building and support these windows so basically how that works you can see the top of my framing is screwed into this wall Girt on the top and then on the bottom I added one in the bottom framing is screwed in to the bottom one and then you have these boards that you patch in and that's all this whole window frame is screwed to all the girls so the weight of this window is mainly carried by this skirt and this skirt and then it's transferred over into the posts and if you have a window with a nailing fan flange these screws so that window is screwed in all the way around and those those Gertz are on end so they're extremely strong so the weight of those windows is transferred through those Gertz into the posts and then into the ground I think some of the benefits of a post frame building are one if you build it like they were originally designed there's less material like I said there's no sheathing on the roof or the sides you can still wrap the house to get that wind kept from getting into your house and it just there's less material you don't have to have a continuous footing if you don't want to and there's a lot of money saved in that with that being said you can add any of those features into this if you want if you feel like you know I just I feel like that'd be better there's nothing to say you can't add that specific thing into your house your post room home that's one thing that's awesome about another benefit is how fast you can close these up if you had a couple guys now I did this by myself but if you had a couple guys to build your building you can get them enclosed very fast because you're not doing any of the internal framing until after the fact you can build the complete outside shell of your house your walls your rough get all your doors and windows in and then after that's all done you can move inside and do all the framing all the plumbing all that kind of good stuff so that is a huge factor if you are trying to build a house yourself and then you have a you know as much time as you want to take it's it's very difficult when you have a family and another job and you're trying to build your own home it takes a lot of time and I will tell you you think something takes a certain amount of time you might as well just double that and in some cases even triple it because things don't always go as smooth as you think they should and some things are just time-consuming so that was a big factor for me being able to just get this framed up and then work on the inside when I can the framing on the inside there's lots of different options for that in the walls as far as the internal framing the walls that are gonna be in between the exterior walls that they're gonna be framed up typically the same way they would in a stick frame house they're gonna be 2x4 16 on center wall walls and I will be going through the different ways you can frame up a wall later on in my mad 30 series when I start framing I'm gonna frame my garage with bookshelf Gertz two by six bookshelf curves because I'm gonna put be putting steel in there but in the house I'm gonna be doing something different and I'll explain all that but you have lots of options once you get inside on how to frame your house another Pro for me is I love a house that is as maintenance-free as possible I always try to stay away from decks I always try to stay away from wood windows wood siding anything that has the potential to rot or something I have to maintain this house is a steel it's all covered in steel I have all vinyl windows my my wraparound porch is all concrete so there's gonna be very little maintenance that I have to do I might I will probably power wash the house once a year just because I like to keep it nice and clean and looking nice but outside of that there's there's hardly any maintenance on this house and that's big for me when you have a family the last thing you need is more things to maintain on your house so that's another great benefit of a post frame home when you use steel is that it's pretty much maintenance-free the reason I chose to build mine the way I did is because I wanted those cost savings in the sheathing on the wall the sheathing on the roof I didn't want to have to spend the extra money on the footing I didn't want a basement there was lots of concerns if you only have column footings how do you protect the outside of your house from rodents and other things burrowing under your concrete and I covered that in one of my videos we'll jump to that right now but what I did is I took rolled aluminum I think it was 24 inch rolled aluminum and before I backfilled I wrapped my house and then I took that aluminum attached to my bottom dirt and ran it down about 15 inches into the ground and then I back filled around it so that will keep any rodent and environments from burrowing underneath your building it's it's a pretty cheap insurance to make sure nothing's getting under your building because you will see in post frame barns of stuff a lot of animals will burrow under that bottom girth as far as cons of a post frame home I can't really think of a ton you know maybe one would be the difficulty of putting up steel if you have never dealt with steel making sure that they're water you know your your home is waterproof around windows and where trims meet and all that can be done pretty pretty easily with a little experience with a little knowledge there are some some guys out there that do a really good job explain it I think aren't our buildings is probably the best as far as water proof in your building I've learned a lot of tips and tricks from him as far as waterproofing my windows and stuff like that you know like I said I put up a lot of steel on buildings but with windows so this is the first time I had to deal with Windows and you know I dove right in as you can see my house has a million windows but I found it fairly easy once I got going and I'm I'm really confident that this homes gonna be waterproof I mean we've had lots of rains and snows and there's been no leaking inside the house I mean nothing's done inside so I'd be able to see no water on the floor no no water coming through the windows and if you go around and look at posts frame buildings and if they have windows and I'm if you look at a lot of them you'll see that the wood is stained from leaking so you want to make sure whatever builder you're picking that they do a really good job and they take pride in making sure that they they're doing that trim right and that they're sealing your building up because there isn't there isn't a ton of builders out there that build post frame poems is there's getting to be more so make sure that might be deciding factor for you you might not be able to find somebody to build your home where you are and that might be deciding factor whether you can build one or not but I would definitely suggest you know if you whoever you hire make sure they have some references make sure you can see their work and they can do a good job all right well I hope this video has helped answer some questions on what exactly post frame construction is versus stick frame hopefully it'll help you make a decision whether it's right for you whether it's wrong for you and don't forget to subscribe to this channel if you're interested in poles for instruction I got a complete build series going on on a post frame home and garage right now that I cover basically every step in the construction process I'm just wrapping up the outside and we'll be moving in shortly there's gonna be a lot of exciting things going on in there I'm gonna go through how to finish everything the plumbing electrical HVAC I'm building an upstairs so all that framing will be included a loft just a lot of good information that's going to be coming down the pipe on the next six seven months so stay tuned don't forget to subscribe and hopefully you enjoyed this video

Channel: MR Post Frame | Marshall Remodel

Views: 259,393

Keywords: Midwest, Iowa, Des Moines, Home, Design, DIY, Do It Yourself, Construction, Self Build, New Build, New Constrution, Post Frame, Pole Barn, Barndominium, Farmhouse, Building, House, Metal Roof, Metal Building

Id: 6ePWjHG757s

Length: 26min 6sec (1566 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 14 2020