Buildings costs

[The Ruminant]

In terms of steel costs, is it cheaper to have a narrow and longer building or a shorter and wider building to cover the same total area?

In other words the narrower building will (I presume) get away with thinner steels compared to one with a wider span but it will have more steels in total.

i suppose what Im asking is, is there an optimum building size to cover a specified area?

 

[AJR75]

Generally speaking, your standard kit sizes offered by the majority of manufacturers will deliver the most economical way of covering an area, having been worked out for best use of stock steel lengths, purlins and roofing materials etc.

Once you stray off the path you're looking at a specific design and the only way to gauge this is by getting some quotes. I wouldn't have through there would be a great deal in it cost wise though. Plus consider your follow on costs for items such as gates, feed barriers etc.- and making off the shelf standard sizes to fit with your steel frame set out.

 

[BobGreen]

Up to say 50’ wide and say 16’ high steel sizes are reasonable
Over this they start rising in weight
Length wise obviously longer you go then it’s so much per bay
You have two gable ends though if it’s 40’long or 400’ long !

 

[RhysT]

Go as wide as you can afford, it’s easy enough to extend it in the future. But impossible to if you want a big clear span building.

 

[Skintagain]

40’ I would say is the most economical from a build POV. If going over 50’ i would want to go to 100’ so the saving on the sides went some way to paying for the frame/roofing

 

[Clive]

It used to be 100ft span was the sweet spot but that may have changed with steel prices

 

[Muddyroads]

Roughly what proportion of the cost of an erected shed is the steel likely to be by the time concrete, cladding, roof, fixtures, labour etc. are taken into account?

 

[Steevo]

Roughly what proportion of the cost of an erected shed is the steel likely to be by the time concrete, cladding, roof, fixtures, labour etc. are taken into account?

Great question! One for @BobGreen I think.

Are you classing labour as just erection rather than steel fabrication also?

 

[designanddetail]

If your building a grain store or something similar then the actual steel frame isn't going to more than 20% of the project cost.

If you are going for a wide span shed then getting a specific design done by an experienced engineer who does a lot of structural work is essential. We recently did a relatively small project that had the steel sizes given by the original generic consultant engineers they were structural engineers but covered everything from block walls to floor slabs and glulam beams etc, we suggested a re-design and sourced it for the client at a cost of £1400. The new design came in with a 6 tonne saving in the main steel frame, that's about £10k saved.

A lot of the large warehouses going up are designed to the very limit. It is quite common to see some steel elements at 98-99% capacity in the calculations. To the extent that the roof pitch is usually kicked up half a degree in manufacturing to allow for the sagging that will occur in the rafters once erected. This is one reason why a lot of industrial building don't have and never will have PV panels. There just isn't any spare capacity in the steel frame to take them if they were not specified in the original build document. Its quite common that we have to change the rafter sizes midway through the drawing process as the end user (not usually the building owner) states they need them to meet some green criteria in their industry etc.

 

[HatsOff]

It's usually wind uplift and deflection that controls the design of sheds. Considering just weight you could put solar panels on but it's more effort than it's worth retrofitting when there are new sheds going up every week.

 

[rusty]

When I put up my 120' by 180' cow cubicle building in 2005 the shed cost was reduced by 10%(10k) by having 2 rows of support steels for the roof down the lines of head to head cubicles. This allowed lighter steel to be used due to the extra support from the additional legs.

 

[Skintagain]

When I put up my 120' by 180' cow cubicle building in 2005 the shed cost was reduced by 10%(10k) by having 2 rows of support steels for the roof down the lines of head to head cubicles. This allowed lighter steel to be used due to the extra support from the additional legs.

I dread to think how much it will have gone up since