Not being ones to shy away from new (to us) building techniques, we were recently asked to erect a quonset hut kit on some remote (read: no power or water...) ranch out east of Austin.
The kit, provided by SteelMaster, is an amazingly efficient use of material to cover a given area. The building we are putting up is roughly 25' by 50' and the amount of materials basically fit on a 7' long pallet, with a few 10' long base plates bundled along.
After the 2' stem walls were poured and the whole area between them packed with roadbase, we set to work bolting the base plates down to the tops of the stem walls with expansion anchors. Once all of those were bolted down and trued up all the arches had to be bolted together. Each arch is composed of multiple corrugated panels (all the same for the whole kit) and starter panels on one end. This took two guys the better part of a day and half to do. Thats a LOT of nuts and bolts!
After that we had to wait for a non-breezy day. We gathered a few more workers to help with the lifting and bolting, set up our scaffolding and ladders and started to lift up arches and provisionally bolt them together.
Once we had a few arches up, we prodded and pulled the building into symmetrical shape, making sure the centers of the arches lined up with the center of the space between stem walls, and tightened everything down. From then on it is just a matter of getting all the arches up and loosely bolted in so nothing can blow away. Once all the arches are up, and the 18' wide side-opening beams, columns, and partial arches are installed, we'll go back and bolt EVERYTHING down and tighten it all up.
That last shot is amazing. I'd hate to see it covered with insulation and panels. Any plans to use this system with containers?
Posted by: Jueri | May 07, 2011 at 11:20 PM
yeah. this is simply a "barn" for farm equipment, so no need for insulation and interior finish. Honestly I'm not even sure how one would go about attaching any sort of panelized interior finish. I guess one could bolt on some interior hat channels when the panels are going up, and then spray foam insulation into the cavities and cover with sheetrock or some bendy-ply. I have been thinking about this as a relatively inexpensive way to span a roof structure across the space between some containers, but it seems to present more problems than it solves. Though I do like the aesthetic of it was only defining an exterior covered space between said containers.
Posted by: Mark Meyer | May 09, 2011 at 07:05 PM
Yeah, seems firmly rooted in the utilitarian, keep the rain out kind of use. Sure is pretty on the inside. Freakin' bolts. Maybe next time a pneumatic riveter? Too bad the whole thing doesn't 'accordion' out in one swoop.
Posted by: Jueri | May 09, 2011 at 08:28 PM
Great looking photos especially the last photo. Thanks for posting this.
Posted by: Hfmfg Corp | May 20, 2011 at 02:53 PM
What about the quality of the product? Decent? You'd buy again?
Posted by: rico seda | July 01, 2011 at 08:07 AM
Rico,
I think the quality of the system was top-notch actually. The only issue we ran into had nothing to do with the building system or materials, but rather some slightly off work by the foundation subcontractor. But nothing that we couldn't fix within the system itself. I will warn you though, there are thousands of nuts and bolts that have to be accessed from BOTH sides in order to properly tighten!
Posted by: Mark Meyer | July 01, 2011 at 06:40 PM