How to Design Your Pole Barn to Stand up to Wind

How to Design Your Pole Barn to Stand up to Wind

Wind can place tremendous stress on a pole barn, so you need to design your building to stand up to strong and sustained winds. If you don’t, the structure could be weakened and it could possibly collapse.

Code buildings are designed to be able to stand up to 90-mile-per-hour straight-line winds. If you live in an area that experiences stronger or sustained winds, you will need to design your pole barn taking that into consideration.

When wind blows against a building, it puts upward force on the building columns that can cause it to lift. In order to combat this phenomenon, you should drill holes deep enough for columns and anchors. The holes should be at least four feet deep, or deeper if your area gets extremely strong winds.

Fasten two pieces of wood to both sides of a sturdy column to create a column anchor. Put it in a hole and then fill in the column hole to anchor it. You may need to fill the hole with concrete instead of dirt or gravel.

The more lumber is in the ground, the stronger your pole barn will be. The closer you place the girts to each other, the stronger the building will be.

Nails and screws may not be strong enough to connect the trusses and columns. Bolts can create tighter connections to enable the pole barn to resist pressure from wind.

When wind blows, it places pressure on the entire building. You should design your pole barn with support bracing to transfer the wind load from the trusses, walls, and columns on the sides of the building facing the wind to the trusses, walls, and columns on the rest of the building. Evenly distributing the pressure will help the building last longer.

The steel panels on the side of a building are its primary protection from wind. The way the steel is attached to the building determines how well it protects the building. You should attach steel panels with screws rather than nails because screws have more than twice the pullout resistance of nails and can provide connections that are twice as strong.

Figure out where the prevailing winds will come from and how strong they will be to design your pole barn appropriately. The United States Department of Agriculture Natural Resource Conservation Service offers a tool for that purpose.

Wind places much more stress on a building when the windows and doors are open because it pushes on the walls from the inside and outside. Latch doors shut when they are not being used.

When you are ready contact CHA Pole Barns to talk about your pole barn project.

 

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We are very pleased with the quality of the materials used in this building. I cannot say enough about Steve and his crew. Their workmanship is superb! The speed with which the building was constructed is amazing.

We are so glad we chose CHA!

Donald Haga