2008-12-12

Homework

Three books that I read and kept as reference were Practical Pole Building Construction, How to Build Small Barns and Outbuildings, and Building Construction Illustrated.

I bought the first two new off of Amazon and the latter I picked up on EBay for a little over 10 dollars plus shipping. I read Practical Pole Building Construction from cover to cover several times and consulted it frequently. If I was going to have only one book that would be the one as it is a very good primer on pole building.

Also, I noticed the link to the USDA's Midwest Building Service was no longer valid. Some of the free USDA plans are on this page. The Canadian Plan Service link is still good but I should point out that the structural loading information are found on the Series 9000 pages.

Actually there's a lot of good information spread throughout both websites and if you've time look at some of the beef, dairy, and other categories. Bottom line is that all of the references and links above helped me, a rookie, figure out how to build this garage. If you're an amateur like me I strongly suggest you read the book(s) and surf those two websites.

More to follow in the next week or so.

Update

I've had several emails plus comments here about sharing the plans for this. I'd do that but the originals got fried along with the hard drive they were on in an old PC I used. But I think I will try to duplicate the plans again and I will share them once I get them into a CAD format.

Incidentally, someone asked me about my CAD training and I replied I don't have any CAD training, but learned as I went along with a copy of Turbo-Cad 7.0 that I got on EBay for 5 or 6 dollars a few years ago. 2D CAD isn't all that hard and since I was primarily drawing rectangles it wasn't that difficult. But, if you're not aware of it, CAD lets you measure things "real-world" right there on your screen and you know immediately if the dimensions you're entering will work or not.

Since there's interest in it I'll try to add some regular updates to it.

All the best to all who've emailed and commented.