I got questions on the building itself and finances and looking for a little guidance.

Looking for something cheap and fast and am thinking about one of the buildings like a car port but with insulation sandwitched between the sheet metal and frame... are they OK? What about companies to buy them from, any recomendations? Also how is payment usually done? One company I been talking to wants $23,000 installed for a 30x40 with 12 foot walls garage door and man door but they want %5 when I make the order then 50% when it is ready to install and the balance when it is done... wouldn't it be safer for both of us if I put the money into an escrow account or something till it's done? The price is barely affordable to me and I am a little uneasy about taking that much risk from some company I saw post a random add on the internets...

I have a local trusted reputable concrete guy willing to do the slab in trade for a truck I have...

I my opinion, $23,000 installed is better than the going price here in Idaho. They are $29,000 to $32,000 without the slab and grading.

Ask for references and contact them to see if they where satisfied.

This guy is from Spokane, where in Idaho are you?


This is a no frills shop Im looking for with no windows and I am sure a crappy roll up door but I need something quick and fast, my landlord has listed this place for sale and it may be a month to get out or a year or maybe whoever buys it may not want me to leave I just don't know so want to get something on my own property...

Star is a few miles N of Boise.
I'm in Sandpoint - though moving to Meridian/Boise border next week - and one local guy is $50/SF for just the pole barn: no doors, concrete, electrical, just the shell.
Saw one built & it's nice; they're big on 14' height & RV openings, that's their basic spec.
Kalispel, you're gonna want heat, I'd bet.
Mac's Tie Downs is a mile from me and their all-metal bldgs cost them about $200/SF, but they're VERY nice.
When it comes to contractors, in this area it's hard to get things done - friends & I built 4 pole barns, a house, and a couple renovations ourselves - about 10 years ago.
In some cases, we got stuff done before people bothered to return calls.

I'm actually in thompson falls now. I wouldn't mind a pole barn.

I see ads for General Steel all the time, have you contacted them?

Make sure you're allowed to build whatever it is you're thinking of.

Permits will add to the cost
You'll need power - how much to run that in and install lights, outlets, etc?
Do you want "water" now or in the future - maybe a crapper. Plumbing needs to be considered before pouring concrete
Want it warm - in your area you want insulation UNDER the concrete.
Want a hoist in the future - you need to pour the thicker pads now.
What about heat?

Slapping up four walls and a roof is no big deal - its all the other stuff that, if you don't plan and invest in it now will just cost you double and piss you off in the future.

This is Montana, no codes HOA or any other crap like that to worry about. My electrical panel is right there already as is fresh water but probably won't do anything but a sink, I would have to add another septic to do a crapper so that is out, I can walk my happy butt to the house or take a leak in outside on a tree. I already have a deal for the concrete with thick pads under the lift and insulation under it. I have a nice big wood stove that is mine in the shop im in now so heat is no issue, I could even go this winter with no insulation as the shop I am in now is not insulated at all and extremely drafty, just getting this one sealed up till next year would be an improvement over the one I'm in right now. I am building a 5.7 hemi and a-500 combo for an electricians 67 dart right now so there is that... I just got to get the dern frame and walls figured out.

Steel pole building is the way to go. Have you thought of a pre-fab wooden garage just to get through till you build one

i have always been leery of paying up front for anything unless i know the person REALLY WELL. If they are well established MAYBE. In 25 years I never took a penny up front. Nor did I ask for payment until the work being billed for was done and parts on site.

IF they file bankruptcy next week or something happens to the owner where's you $$. Sign an enforceable contract with nothing upfront, or pay him with a credit card if you must, and the other 45% when the materials are on site, balance when done.
Or buy the building yourself and hire him to erect it

EDIT: Does one pay inn advance for their Groceries, Gas, or most anything else? NO!

Don't be so sure about that. If you are in city limits, check with the city, if in county, check with the county. It may be more involved than you think.

It's a slippery slope, but to me money up front is a red flag. It has in recent years become more of the norm. If you have to be their banker, I would set it up as a certain percentage paid at specified points of construction.

The worst part of what I am reading here is that you are in a rush to get a building up. That may cause issues with your expectations of when you want to start, the total price, getting materials & an unrealistic schedule to finish it. All it takes is one setback such as a concrete contractor who can't start on the date agreed to start a domino effect that could extend the project time by weeks or months. Is it possible to rent another space while you plan better for this garage build?

I just had another thought. Draw up a contract between you and he guaranteeing him the job at an agreed upon price. Once the material is on site, I would include a start (window) IE: 1-2 weeks? and estimated finish time. His 5% upfront fee is likely there to keep you from changing your mind and him getting stuck with the materials which is to a degree understandable.
With the above contract notarized etc. YOU then buy the materials at his cost and have them delivered directly to your property. He still get's his profit/ markup and you at least have the materials if somethings happens to him.

That looks like a good plan, after you check his references. Also, I really bet there are building codes your new building will have to meet.

this late in the year, A pole barn will probably be the fastest build, and may be the only thing that can get put up before the ground freezes too hard, and that is really debatable at this point. I don't see how anything can even get started before Nov1st. I would price out a metal building if there is a resource in your area. The metal buildings used to be better quality (and slightly more money), but that was several years ago.

Honestly, I'm surprised you can get any 30 x 40 with 14' sidewall building with materials and be erected for the quoted price.

Pole barns are pretty much common up in your neck of the woods.

Yes they are, but it is also not legal to put them up in most towns and cities. There are also restrictions on how the roof needs to be reinforced to handle a specific snow load. If a guy intends to insolate a pole barn, its cheaper to build a metal building or even a "stick built" garage here. Any bare bones just outer shell 30 x 40 building erected on a prepared sight around here is easily 2x the price he was quoted.

Get one built as big as you can, even straining to make it bigger than you think you need now.
My shop was built as a pole barn originally with two thirds of it with a dirt floor and then the former owners added onto it three times, I had the dirt floors converted to concrete and added insulation, electrical, windows and drywall as well as several sky lights to make it useable for me
I would like to add onto it again and double its size, it is right at 30x40 ft. now with the 15 Ft. wide center part with 14 ft. high walls and a 15x14 Ft. roll up modern metal door. the two outer sides have 7 Ft. high ceilings with sky lights in them now.
You know the old saying, a man can never have too big of a shop, correct

Rule number one: figure out what you need or think you need then DOUBLE it. If needed at that point work backwards from the double size but never down to what you thought you needed.

Some of you shop guys have it made. I fit 3 cars with probably over five parts cars worth of parts in a 2-1/2 car garage. Lol. All of the larger hoods, fenders, doors, seats, etc are upstairs in the rafters.

Now that's a nice garage and mopars!My wife wants me to eventually have a garage.And of course a cool mopar to go in it.We have a shop and I'd like to add on to it.we already have a cement driveway and electricity to the shop.i thought one of those steel or wood garages just wondering?Good luck with you're garage project!

Too true; when I moved from my 2-car garage to the new 40' X 30' shop I thought that's all I'll ever need...two expansions later and I still need more room.

Dedicate your time to putting together a very well thought-out plan and, as already mentioned, you might as well double the space you're thinking you will need.

I've never heard anyone say that they wish their garage was smaller.

Rushing a garage isn't a good plan.

Mike.

One of the fastest way I have seen to build relatively inexpensive mining industry shop buildings is concrete tilt up.

The first one I saw done was about year 1970 near Paintsville KY and that tilt up building is still used as a warehouse today.

This video shows the kinda “deluxe version”
but the basic concept should be clear:
pour the floor,
then use that floor as the lower side of additional concrete forms that create the other building walls and roof.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kC_pEaccZQA

These buildings are investments that an prominent thought to hold in mind is: what can I sell it for in the future?

I am finally building my shop. It seems like it's taken forever. Just under 3500 square feet. My wife looked at the outline, before it started, and said it looked small.

I started at a rented house with an old two stall garage that I had to share with the people in the other 1/2 of the house. My car barely fit in it, I was 19.

6 months later we bought a house with no garage at all (it was what we could afford). About a year later I started renting a 2 car garage several blocks from our home. As expected, it didn't take long to fill it with "stuff". About a year later, I rented a 4 stall garage (it was 20' deep and 36' wide), and farther from home then the last garage was. I ran a dirt track car out of that garage, and filled 3 stalls of it of it with stuff needed to run the race car.

At about 26yo, we bought a house in the country with a 26 x 36 garage. The race car and its tag along stuff occupied the whole garage. The cars my wife and I drove sat outside, but the place had a lot of space I could park parts cars on. At one point I had 13 cars and trucks I was parting out, 4 cars and trucks licensed we were driving, and the race car and its stuff in the garage. We lived there for 16 years. Towards the end of that time, the race car was replaced with parts removed from the parted cars, our personal cars still sat outside, the garage was full.

Then I started my welding shop and rented a 36 x 36 building back in town (still had all the stuff at home in the country). Three years later I rented a larger 40' x 60' building to house my welding shop. That building filled up pretty fast, but a lot of the stuff was not my stuff, it was customer stuff. I finally figured that out when we moved back into town to a house with a 24 x 30 garage, and all the stuff at the house in the country had to be dwindled down to fit into the garage in town, and any spare space at my welding shop. That was not a fun time. At the time, I had to split 10 car trailer loads of parts between the house and my welding shop, and I ended up scrapping 6,600lbs of Mopar motors, transmissions, and a huge assortment of other Mopar parts I didn't have room for.

Two years after that, we sold that house and moved to our current location. This place is zoned for business, and the plan was to move the welding shop here. The issue is, there is one 24 x 24 garage, with another 24 x 24 garage under the 1st garage (a double decker 24' x 24' garage). Here everything except licensed vehicles had to be under cover. The stuff in the 40 x 60 building, and the stuff crammed into the 24' x 30' garage had to fit into those two garages, plus there had to be space to actually work on stuff inside the upper garage. Another major down sizing. This was was much worse, because this was all the "good stuff". I moved the welding shop to the current house 6 months after we bought it.

This current place has a nice flat side yard. The original plan was to put a 40' x 40' building (the size I determined was the correct size for my needs, remember I already had a 40 x 60 that housed a lot of other peoples stuff, and I was not doing that again) on that side yard. It would have to meet current building codes, and it would have to be a turn key set up (I was working long hours in the welding shop, and a building builder I am not). That turn key 40' x 40' building in the year 2,000 was over $50 grand. Money I did not have just after buying the property. When the economy tanked in 2006 (around here), I was pretty happy I was not on the hook for that additional $50 grand. The building was not built, and at this point won't be while I'm alive.

i see lots of guys here telling others that they should build a building 2x what they think is big enough. 30 years ago I would have agreed, but these days I'm not so sure. After having to go through two large building downsizes a few years apart, I can tell you it is a lot harder to sell off or give stuff away then it is to not buy it in the 1st place. If you don't have the space to put it, its a very good reason not to spend your money on it Build the building you think is the size you need, then don't buy what you don't have space for.

Just read what these guys are saying, you will keep buying stuff until you run out of space, then you build a bigger building so you can buy more stuff. Don't get caught up in that mad cycle. When you get to the point your collection has to (or should) go away, its very hard to watch it go, and could be even harder if you have to make it go away and it seems like no one wants it. There is a very big difference between what you need and what you want. Build a building based on what you need, not on what you think you might want. There is nothing wrong with building what you can afford to start with, then adding more if you NEED it.

Good advice. I know a few people who built large shops that ended up costing them more than anticipated and then they were short money to do anything with their cars for awhile until the money situation caught back up.

Also if you think you may want to add more building later place the building on the property such that adding another 10-15 more feet or whatever more to the back of it in the future still works. It's easy to remove one blank shop wall and pour a new slab extension up against the existing and build new walls on down to follow.

If you live in a neighborhood there are likely rules that dictate how high above the fence it can be and where you can put it. In some upper scale neighborhoods they won't let you build a shop at all No boats or trailers in the backyard or anything showing above the fence from the street.

You need to ask around and see if any of your neighbors or their friends are retired contractors. It is really simple to put up a stick built shop building if you have some help from someone with the tools and experience. Pour a slab and then you build the walls on the slab and tilt them up into place. A small crew of 2 or 3 guys can put up a small shop in a couple of days. Get the rafters built off site and delivered by truck. You need to rent a a couple pieces of equipment from a local rental yard.

I had a steel building put up a few years back. It was a super nice building but for a small shop I'd go stick built. Especially as far north as you are. Use 2 x 6 studs and stuff those walls full of insulation so you can keep warm in the winter. No windows, a man door and a roll up door should be all you need.