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Metal buildings

BruceC

Aluminum
Joined
Dec 20, 2004
Location
San Jose, Ca
Anyone have experience or information on a metal building kit manufacturer called: Heritage Building Systems, Inc. out of Little Rock Ar.? I am looking into building a shop in my back yard and am considering a metal building. They sent me the following quote:

35’W x 45'L x 12” (ie. the walls are 12')
Clearspan Frame (ie, not a truss, might also be called a ridge frame)
Roof slope: 4:12 (4" rise for 12" run)
1 walk in door
1 overhead door 14’ x 10’
1 overhead door 8’ x 8’
(2) 6’ x 3’ sliding windows
3’ extension both endwalls
2’ extension both sidewalls
e-foil db foil/foil roof and wall insulation (I think this is that silver bubble rap insulation)
26 ga, 20 yr roof and side panels
4 skylights
Gutters and downspouts
Trim kit
Base Trim
Eave Trim
Shipping

They make up all the parts and ship it to your door step. You are responsible for the slab, electrical, plumbing, and whatever else you don’t realize you need until you actually are doing it.

You and a fork lift put it together.

$17,220

Anyone with helpful comments on this potential project?
 
I don't know about CA but here in Oklahoma that price is rediculous. I built a 30 X 50 with a 6 inch slab. All materials and the floor costed $7000. Mine has trusses, isulation (you don't want skylights if you are going to insulate), 2 overhead insulated doors, one walk-in door. My sheet metal is 30 year bright white with charcoal trim. I also priced from heritage, they sent me a VHS tape of their buildings, which looked great, but my quote was about as high as yours. Do you have a steel shop anywhere around that you could price these components? I used 3 1/2" tubing for the poles, and used 3" "c" purlin to attach the sheet iron to. You need about 1200 feet of purlin to do a 30 X 50 building, and I think purlin is still less than $1/foot. I would guess for the price difference of buying from a steel supplier as opposed to Heritage, you could drive to Oklahoma and haul the materials back with you. But if that price is inline with CA economics, I'd buy it, they have extremely nice kits, but for me I could assemble one a whole lot cheaper. Good Luck, Oh and one more thing, when you think you have enough electrical, add more because you wont. I think I put 35 double outlets and I could have used 50. Good luck with your project.

Chad
 
Well , what are their local references ? What Buildings have they sold within a few miles of your place ?

As has been broght out on this board already , CONTRACTORS that are shysters are always doing geographic hops and making contacts through impersonal media, that is , advretisements.Will they take your check and even even deliver the stuff (extreme) Gill they slide the load off the rollback and break some ot the trusses (common, even for local distributers) When I built mine I needed a lot of verbal help , Glad I used a local lumber yard with hundreds of satisfied clients in the area.

Dave
 
I think the price is too high, In Southern
California I got a 30 x 40 (smaller) for about
$22,000, but I did zero work and that included
everything 12 x 8 sectional door, office door,
sky lights, extra girting for electrical runs
and 420 sq ft of driveway. All permits and plans
were done, I just wrote checks, work was just
completed. Two guys and a forklift aren't going
to put it together in a weekend either, those
stories are "Urban Legend".
 
Chad, how long ago did you build it? Sounds cheap to me. I have a feeling with the rising costs of fuel and materials that buildings are going to go through the roof. Here concrete has gone from $60 to $140 a yard. I built my 24' X 36' shop ten years ago for $25,000. I'm sure it would be double that now. Shop is conventional construction though with bathroom and cooling.
Why not skylites? Do yours condense in Ok? I put in two in my shop and wish there were more, they help with light a lot and no problems with them at all.
Michael
 
I think that $17,000 for a 30x50 is not bad, since it includes all the insulation, doors, and everything else.
You are going to pay about 2500-3000 just for the materials for the concrete slab.
I was figuring out a 40x60 and with concrete, electric, and everything else, I was at about $30,000. That was doing everything my self.
I have built those steel buildings before. It is not that hard, but if you have never done it before, it might not work out. I have seen them built where everything looks wrinkled and messed up.
But I have no idea of what you can do, so you very well might be able to do it fine.
I could do one in about 1-1/2 weeks complete from excavating to being complete. With 3 people total, not working all that fast at it. (not including electric lines or finished plumbing anything like that inside)
 
You may want to check your Yellow Pages, see what is available locally.
There is a large herd of building suppliers.

Prices are increasing, will be worse.
Up here concrete is $85/yard.
I just had a slab poured, 4 and 6" thick, insulated,5 sack mix, lotsa rebar. $6500.
Spray in insulation (not foam), sheet rock and painted, $7K.
A 10X15 area (sub shop for "clean work"
This is a 30X40. 12ft. walls.
Fellow doing the work lives down the road,highly reccomended, in a rural area like this, rip-off types do not survive.
My stuff is on my trailer, stowed in his shop til' he finishes, a neighborly thing.
ng.
 
A couple years ago when I was shopping for a steel home kit I "encountered" Heritage. Turned out they were in legal trouble of some kind. Have your lawyer take a close look at the actual contract you're considering. I backed away from them after it became evident they had no intent of fulfilling their advertisement claims. Their contract was a ripoff.

If you want a good shop, I put up a 30' X 40' quonset, 14' high. The steel was about $6600. My wife and I put it up with a skid-loader to which I mounted a boom-pole in place of the bucket.
 
Just checking building ads in todays local farming paper:Pioner building 36' wide x 48' long x 10' high w/2- 12' w. x 12' high sliding doors and 3' entry door includes freight, labor to install, taxes etc. $13250.00 A 40' x 60' x12' h. w 2 10' x 10' garage doors complete ready to move into-$18,250.00 Any chance you could move your lot east? ;)
 
Check out Menards they have good prices on their kits, and they are usually local. If you need extras they will have them.

We put one of these together 6-7 years ago the cost was about 7K and it was a reasonable kit.

Dave J
 
The roof overhangs, skylights, windows, gutters, base trim, eave trim make up more of the total than you may think. Skin tends to be priced competitively, the extras are very expensive.

If cost is an issue, anything you can do to keep it simple will make a big difference.
 
Bruce,

I put up a 35 x 60 x 20 side walls 4:12 pitch with 3 16 x 12 doors and 2 walk doors, insulated, about three years ago. Got mine from Steelbuilding.com. Cost was about $20,000 for building, and spent about he same for concrete and electric. (drive way is 270' long). My son and I put it up, took about 3 months weekends and nights.
Turned out Steelbuilding.com brokered it to local company, but the cost was about $4000 less than buying it locally. Go figure.
 
If you put in a building a few years ago you would be shocked at the cost of materials in California such as cement today, especially after the hurricanes and follow-up price gouging.

I just had a 40'x60' 6" thick rebar re-enforced slab with a deep steel rebar re-enforced perimeter foundation and heavy steel rebar re-enforced piers, 80 yards of 2,500 PSI cement poured today. This was fully engineered for earthquakes.

By the time you pay for the high boom cement pump truck, a crew of 10 professional cement finishers, and 8 truck loads of cement etc, it cost me $11,000 today. My son in law works cement professionally and saved me a few thousands over local bids to do the same job.

On top of this was site leveling, compacting etc, and approx $25,000 more for an engineered steel building it will cost you quite a bit more than what I was reading above!

It took me this past year to finally get all the required permits and this was on an 8 acre plot in the country.
 
Thanks everyone for all the great incites, information, and suggestions of things for me to reconsider.

In addition to getting a quote from Heritage Building Systems http://heritagebuildings.com/ I also have an appointment with an architect this week to see what he has to offer. I have never worked with an architect before. Most likely his services will be too expensive but I would like to hear his suggestions and what services he has to offer.

Also, I contacted a local company which puts up steel buildings manufactured by V P Buildings, http://www.vp.com/index.html. They will do all the work from slab to putting up the building. I would like to see the difference in cost between a kit and having someone else do all the work. He was suppose to call me back last Fri. evening. I made sure I was home to receive the call but it never came. My experience is that nobody in the building trades needs more business or at least not my business.
 
You need to know a lot more about what's being proposed than just "metal building" to be able to compare prices. That term can encompass anything from a spindly wood framed farm building to buildings with heavy industrial contruction features.

Assuming all steel construction, there are 4 factors that affect price in a big way.

-wind load rating
-live load (snow, etc) rating
-standing seam or screw down roof
-exterior wall panel configuration (deep or shallow formed, with exposed or concealed fasteners)

Once you nail these specs down, there's generally not a lot of difference in price of equivalent buildings from one manufacturer to another. My offhand guess on a current price for good quality buildings in smaller sizes would be right in line with the ~$10/sf jlrsn said he paid for his, just for the unassembled building alone. Going to higher end components like standing seam, concealed fasteners, higher eave height, or higher than standard LL/WL ratings could add another $4/sf to this fairly easily.
 
Michael, I built my shop in August of '04. THe price of materials is about the same as it was then. Cement is $65/yd for 3000# mix, sheet iron has gone up a little, it was $60/square and is now $75/square. This is my third insulated building to build and the two that have skylights might as well have no insulation. The heat transfer is unbelievable. They sweat and after a few years need to be replaced as they become brittle. They are also a very easy access point, for theives. I have no windows (for the same reason) so that would drop the cost some too. For the most part material prices in my region are about the same, so I would think my estimate is about the same. Keep in mind that I built mine, I just bought the materials, I am in rural OK so no permits or anything, I just cleared a site and let them pour a slab and built on that. Myself along with my brother in law and my dad built my building in about 4 days, after the cement was dry. I would still bet you could buy the materials from a steel supply house and come out a lot cheaper, even if you hired a welder to help build it. Building a metal building is not that hard, its much easier than wood and a lot faster. If you decide to go that route I could get a few pictures of how I set my purlin and how everything is tied in.

Chad
 
Go to www.steelbuilding.com before you decide. This site will allow you to design and price your building on the spot. It also prices by where you live. You can add, change or delete options and reprice. It's pretty slick! They will also give you references to local/area customers. You can contact them at your leisure or stop by and look.

The price you pay depends a lot on local codes. A building in one state or even the next county may be more or less depending on the building codes and loads for the region. You can't compare prices on size alone.
 
A number of people recommended http://www.steelbuilding.com/index.htm . I had already gotten a quote from http://heritagebuildings.com/ but am checking out steelingbuilding.com. It turns out that Heritage owns Steelbuilding.com. (According to the sales person at Heritage who also said they would match steelbuilding.coms price.)

I checked out a reference from Heritage. It was 50” x 80” x 16”. The owner was happy with the service he got from Heritage. His one piece of advice to me was to be sure the bolts in the slab for the columns are in the right place. More than one person has given me this same advice. Putting these bolts in the wrong location must be a common mistake.

Does anyone have any comments on choosing a height for the over head doors and walls? Is there anything specific that can’t be done with 12’ walls and a 10’ door? Can you drive an RV through a 10’ high door? How high does the ceiling need to be for a car lift? What other things should be considered?
 








 
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