Small Steel Building

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I am preparing to build a metal storage unit. I am pouring the slab tomorrow, it will be 6 feet deep and 16 feet long, 7 feet tall with two sets of double doors along the front 16'. Sort of a set of deep lockers. The dimensions are dictated by space limitations. I am planning to use corrugated steel for the sides and roof with either 1.5" or 2" angle for the framework. I will screw the panels in place with self tappers. Was considering 1" square tube for the doors, with either flat panels set inside the tubing or maybe more corrugated steel.This is my first steel building so I'd appreciate any advice or ideas. They are mostly hidden from view in my yard but I don't really want them to look ugly. Galvanized sheets and rusted steel are pretty popular around here for fences and gates, kind of hoping I can make it look a little "artsy". I thought about trimming the corners and edges with bare steel.Thanks, BMiller Challenger 172Miller Thunderbolt AC/DC 225/150Miller Maxstar 150 STLVictor 100CVictor JourneymanOxweld OAHarris O/ASmith O/A little torchNo, that's not my car.
Reply:For now, just make sure that the slab is poured on well compacted soil, and in the correct place, and above grade, so that the shed doesn't drink water.Now's the time to locate any "cast-in" anchors,  rodent walls,  drains, etc.Good LuckLast edited by denrep; 08-01-2010 at 09:55 PM.
Reply:It is practically on top of the ground, the floor will be 3.5" above grade. As far as compacted soil, that's all we have here, compacted soil and rock!Thanks.What is a rodent wall?Miller Challenger 172Miller Thunderbolt AC/DC 225/150Miller Maxstar 150 STLVictor 100CVictor JourneymanOxweld OAHarris O/ASmith O/A little torchNo, that's not my car.
Reply:You shouldn't pour the slab until you know where you need your weld plates to weld the columns down. You will need them on the corners and on both sides of the door. I would nail a 2"x2" on the inside of the slab to form a 2x2 tin ledge. Anchor a 2"x2" angle down to the slab at the edge. Your tin will set on the tin ledge and screw to the angle.The frame of the building should be 4" purlin, minimum, 6" would be better. The door should be square tubing no smaller than 1 1/4". If your going to screw it together then the purlin to purlin joints shoud use clips, straight and angle.
Reply:Critters love to burrow under concrete slabs.In some areas it's practice to pour a  "rodent wall" skirt extending bellow grade at the edges of a slab, to discourage digging.  In a semi-dry area, galvanized sheet steel would do for the rodent wall. Or in a very dry area, I suppose even  non-galvanized would last forever.Good LuckLast edited by denrep; 08-01-2010 at 10:08 PM.
Reply:Bob, I was planning to redhead everything down, corners and also the angle will have one side flat to the slab which I was also going to redhead. It is in my yard with two sides into the corner of a 6' masonary wall, no real wind to speak of.Miller Challenger 172Miller Thunderbolt AC/DC 225/150Miller Maxstar 150 STLVictor 100CVictor JourneymanOxweld OAHarris O/ASmith O/A little torchNo, that's not my car.
Reply:Really figure out how to flash any windows and/or other cut-outs in your walls. Ran into problems with flashing these things on my new shop walls(1 7/8" corrugated ). Not a lot of options available for my profile. gonna have to do some creative stuff myself.200amp Air Liquide MIG, Hypertherm Plasma, Harris torches, Optrel helmet, Makita angle grinders, Pre-China Delta chop saw and belt sander, Miller leathers, shop made jigs etc, North- welders backpack.
Reply:Bob, sounds more like he's building a heavy duty Home Depot sheet metal shed than a pole barn. Most of the DIY metal kits hardly even want you to screw them down. I did a little 6x8 metal shed for a family memebr 20 years ago and all it's had is some galvy deck screws holding it to the wood deck all these years. (Granted the deck is built of PT 6x6's on 24" centers and 3/4" PT ply...)I'd have to agree about the turndown to keep critters out. That the one issue my family member had with their shed. I told them to do concrete, but they thought they knew better... The new one that will replace it in the fall will have the turned down crete pad this time around..No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth! Ronald Reagan
Reply:No problems here with rodents digging under slabs, never even heard of it. Our biggest problem here is termites.Miller Challenger 172Miller Thunderbolt AC/DC 225/150Miller Maxstar 150 STLVictor 100CVictor JourneymanOxweld OAHarris O/ASmith O/A little torchNo, that's not my car.
Reply:A rodent wall is the small wall you build to line up the rodents so they can be blindfolded and then summarily shot for digging under the concrete and making homes.  All of Az is infested with a little creature called a round tailed ground squirrel.  They are cute and make a squeak noise when they  see you coming.   They eat the chicken scratch if they can get it. I have a lot of them,  one colony have taken over my stack of 2 7/8 pipe, I think there are 1/2 dozen in there, and safe as a WW2 bunker.  They burrow through the irrigation berms and then you get a water break out...@#$% little squirrels.   So, I have got a hobby now, trying to shoot them with my pump up one shot pellet pistol.  My eyes are not so good anymore  so the score this summer is  squirrels= 400 pellets wasted. Me = one squirrel.   It is a fair contest.Don't kill  the ants, let 'em be, then you'll hve no termites.  Natural enemies. Attached ImagesLast edited by PapaLion; 08-02-2010 at 06:35 AM.Lincoln Power MIG 215Lincoln WeldPak 3200HDLincon ProCut 25Lincoln WeldanPower 225 AC/DCIf all else fails... buy more tools
Reply:If you are pouring a concrete slab 6 feet deep by 16 feet long, I don't think you'll have to worry about any rodents digging under the edge of the slab.       With a concrete slab and a metal building/shed, you shouldn't have any problem with termites.  Cause they really don't eat or dig through concrete or steel.  More seriously, if you are trying to make a shed that is 6 ft wide by 16 ft long by 7 ft tall (at the walls and not the roof peak?), I'd suggest making it wider.  A shed 6 ft wide doesn't seem to me to be a useful size.  Too long and too skinny to get in and out of.  To me a 10 ft wide shed is about the minimum, because by the time you frame out the doors you are talking maybe 2 ft side walls and some double 3 ft wide doors.  And for getting into and out of a shed, a 6 ft wide doorway (double 3 ft swing out doors) really isn't all that wide at all.For the slab, site prep is important.  Dig down the appropriate depth as required for your locale, first make SURE there are no utilities in the area (call the usually mandated One-Call number and get the utility mark outs done before hand!!!), also make sure the dig depth gets down to compacted and undisturbed soil, put in a nice bed of crushed gravel (gets the dig depth down deeper and also sets up a good drainage base to help keep the slab dry), put in a vapor barrier on top of the gravel and under the concrete (again, helps keep the slab dry), form it all out and level the forms, and use the appropriate reinforcement (rebar, mesh, fiber-reinforced 'crete) and the appropriate concrete mixture (slow-set, fast-set, temperature compensating, air-entraining, etc, etc additives) for the task.If you have never done concrete before and you are doing it yourself, heed this little bit of advise:Concrete waits for no one.Once you start and the concrete is mixed with water, the clock is ticking and there is no time out.  Have enough manpower on hand to pour, spread, screed, float, trowel, etc the concrete.  Especially in a hot area (Arizona usually counts as hot to me   ), the concrete can go from moveable/fluid to set-up and rock hard PDQ.And for anything bigger than maybe a single 3 ft wide man door, I don't think 1 inch square hollow steel tube is big or stiff enough for the task.  The best laid schemes ... Gang oft agley ...
Reply:Thanks Moon, but the 6' width is dictated by my tiny city lot. I still need room for my 2 trucks and my utility trailer. So my idea was to build lockers along one wall. Then I stretched them out to 6' deep, so now it is sort of a locker shed. That's why the two sets of double doors, to get to everything without actually going in. The roof will be only slightly angled. I am keeping the overall height to 7' so it can't be seen from the street.When you think about it, a storage shed really wastes space, you can't fill it all the way up else you can't get to everything. With a locker type setup you can fill it pretty near all the way and still get to things without unloading everything.I have done a bit of concrete before. Did my slab today, 1 yard, mixed in a 1.5 cu ft mixer, poured and finished by me myself & I, (in 2 sections) I'm beat and ready for bed.Last edited by bigb; 08-02-2010 at 10:47 PM.Miller Challenger 172Miller Thunderbolt AC/DC 225/150Miller Maxstar 150 STLVictor 100CVictor JourneymanOxweld OAHarris O/ASmith O/A little torchNo, that's not my car.
Reply:bigb,It was a playful poking fun at you about the "6 ft deep" dimension.  Hence all the laughing smileys.  Your slab and dimensions were 6 ft WIDE x 16 ft long.  The slab was probably only a few inches deep/thick, right?    A slab 6 ft deep would be more like an airport runway for heavy-lift  aircraft.  Yeah, 1 yd doesn't sound like much, until you have to mix and spread it all by hand.  Using a 1.5 cu ft mixer to do that 1 cu yd of concrete worked out to 20 or so full loads in the mixer.  Yeah, that's some work.  Hmmm, a 6 ft x 16 ft x 4 inch thick slab of concrete works out to 1.2 cu yd of concrete, yup a quick 'sanity-check' on the numbers indicates that you didn't pour a slab 6 ft thick.    Because that would have been 21.3 cu yds of concrete.    Hey, it's your shed and your storage.  Make what works for you, space and storage wise.     The best laid schemes ... Gang oft agley ...
Reply:MoonRise I had to do a "slab" 20ft x 20ft, 4 foot deep one time. Actually it was an oversized footing. We talked the Architect out of making it 8 foot deep (the wall footings 10 feet away were only 1 foot thick and top of the two footings were the same. Architect was afraid the small stream in the back yard would over flow and wash out the big footing. Not sure what he thought was going to happen to the basement wall. .) 60 yards of crete in one hole. Ever try and finish something 4 foot thick? We just added lots of Super P and made it self leveling. .No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth! Ronald Reagan
Reply:I did get the fun poking but I guess I was just too tired to laughFootings don't seem too important when you have solid caliche at 18" and no frost.DSW it is crazy how architects are always wanting overkill. Sometimes I think they just don't know their stuff so they spec overkill just to keep them from being responsible for anything. Trouble is, that overkill tends to push the budget over. I get drawings all the time that specify ridiculous wire sizes and services. A good one is a 20 amp dedicated circuit specified for six smoke alarms. Once I had one that wanted 10 gauge wire to recessed cans.Last edited by bigb; 08-03-2010 at 09:02 PM.Miller Challenger 172Miller Thunderbolt AC/DC 225/150Miller Maxstar 150 STLVictor 100CVictor JourneymanOxweld OAHarris O/ASmith O/A little torchNo, that's not my car.
Reply:Bob I found a few picts from that house job. The funny thing is this idiot who was the Architect was one of my Profs in school for Architecture. We were digging footings and he still didn't know where all the columns were going to be. We got an answer like "around here sort of" and a wave of the arms that took in about 100 sf. In the end it would have been cheaper to pour the whole floor 18" thick and he could put columns where ever he wanted.  That and he made notes on the 1/8" scale drawings with a 1/2"x3/4" wide Magnum marker!Oh there are 35 columns in this basement. I think the rough size was 50'X75' IIRC  Some are so close I could step from post top to post top. Pict number 2 shows the steel over the mega footing in the far back (it's the gray steel above every thing else. Missing from this pict is the 2 36" tall 3/4" thick wide flange beams that were to replace 2 columns that need to be taken out. Truck driver thought they were for the bridge being rebuilt down the street a few blocks and sat there for an hour while everyone there was on lunch before realizing his error. The last pict is the footing. It's deceptive. The tall cages will only be sticking out of the pour by 12" when done to tie in the 3' tall piers that will go on top, that the steel will be bolted into. Attached ImagesLast edited by DSW; 08-03-2010 at 09:27 PM..No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth! Ronald Reagan
Reply:Originally Posted by denrepCritters love to burrow under concrete slabs.In some areas it's practice to pour a  "rodent wall" skirt extending bellow grade at the edges of a slab, to discourage digging.  In a semi-dry area, galvanized sheet steel would do for the rodent wall. Or in a very dry area, I suppose even  non-galvanized would last forever.Good Luck
Reply:Originally Posted by MondoIn my part of the country it is called a "Frost Wall" and it is typically 4 feet deep.  Putting one in is like pouring a half-height foundation then backfilling to within 4 inches of the top.  The slab is poured flush to the top after backfilling and hydraulic compacting.A properly insulated building on top of slab that has a four foot frost wall will never freeze inside, even if the outdoor temps hover below zero for two or three weeks at a time.  And there ain't no critters burrowing under it, either.- Mondo
Reply:Pipes freezing in the cellar or in above grade living quarters is different than the inside of a single large space that has a slab floor in direct contact with the ground and surrounded by a four-foot frost wall.   In 1990 I worked in such a shop in the winter while the outdoor weatrher was always below freezing and often sub-zero day and night for a week or more at a stretch.   My boss said it would not freeze in the shop even without heat.  To test him I put a bottle of water on the floor by the leg of a bench.  In the entire month I was in that shop milling lumber in January the water didn't so much as form a skin on top.   The shop was essentially a large two-bay garage with a twelve foot ceiling and two 12W x 10H overhead doors.  In the near constant 35 degrees all I needed was a warm sweater to be comfortable.  I worked bare-handed milling rough sawn pine and making cabinets for his office. The soil below the slab remains pretty close to 50 degrees (F) all year 'round and regulates the temperature of the open space inside the building.  But this requires the floor is not covered by something that reduces the heat transfer, like a plywood platform common to pre-fab homes.A residential house with multiple partitions, especially if it is built on a full cellar or has a crawl space under a platform floor, is a different structure.  The full cellar is likely to have windows just at or slightly above grade with a box sill and platform floor above grade.  This presents a heat loss problem and requires external foam board insulation with some sort of stucco-like coating or other protective skin.  Even then there is enough heat loss between grade level and level of the floor that the interior of the building will drop well below freezing if the structure remains unheated.The foundation you describe I know as a "turned-down slab".  Few homes in northern NH are built on turned-down slabs, except maybe some pre-fabs and the classic "mobile home" aka trailer.  Pipes in those structures freeze frequently.-MondoMember, AWSLincoln ProMIG 140Lincoln AC TombstoneCraftsman Lathe 12 x 24 c1935Atlas MFC Horizontal MillCraftsman Commercial Lathe 12 x 36 c1970- - - I'll just keep on keepin' on.