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.
