Bad News and Good News

The bad news is that 9+ inches of snow collapsed the cover over our tractors.

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Good news is that none of the tractors were damaged.

Best news is that when we rebuild, it will be larger and hold more tractors.

I have 2' + in yard with possibly 6 more inches coming tomorrow you want some ? LOL

better freeze some snow balls maybe you wont see that again for a good many years

Ya had a lot of that up here in 2007 and 2008. A friend lost his business because the building fell in and his insurance told him poor maintenance caused it but shoot the build was like 75 years old so how do you do much with it. Hope you had good insurance and don't have to fight them much since they do like to bleed a person dry and then not pay out

hello james. glad your tractors pulled through unscathed. doesnt appear that cover was built with much of a snow load in mind but probably not something you need to worry about to often down there. anyway room for more tractors is always a bonus.

Room there for a stable also.

Most insurance companies issue separate snow load policies and to get it building must be inspected as many older and farm buildings were/are poorly engineered/built.

Of course, I like the GOOD much better than the BAD. Glad there was no damage.

The really good news is I had moved my $16,000 aluminum horse trailer from where I had been parking it under a large elm tree to behind the shop. The elm tree snapped about 15 feet up and would have totaled my pride-and-joy horse trailer if it had been parked under it. I"ll get James to post a pic of the snapped tree.

As far as the tractor shed, this was our first time to build using steel pipe and purlins. Followed the advice of the co. that sold us the supplies rather than our "instincts". From here on out, we go with our "instincts".

We can salvage at least some of the sheet metal and probably re-use it on the new shed.

The hay barn we built had absolutely no problems with the snow load.

We built the barn in Dallas. We got over 12 inches in Dallas and the barn had no problems with the snow load.

We"re already making plans for the replacement shed, but beloved hubby didn"t mention any new tractors. We may have to negotiate between new tractors and a barn for my horses.

This snowfall set new records.

This was the first time we had used steel and followed the recommendation of the co. that sold us the supplies. We were not "comfortable" with the supplies, but since we had never used steel purlins & pipe, figured the co. knew more than we did. this shed was a problem since day one.

New shed will be much stronger.

pends on how much slope, and how far you run the purlin between posts.. since your almost flat..... ten feet would be very good..20 would be stretching it.. any more would be very very bad....

Hi James & Nancy - Good to hear it didn't damage any tractors! Plus, you can get ideas of what worked & didn't on how to do your new construction...

Howard

Sorry for your loss, but as you already know, in the big picture of things this is just an irritation.

When I built my barn/shed in 1980 I had to have an engineer's certification that it would stand snowload of at least 50#/sq ft. Further away from the metro area, barns are permitted to be built for 30#/sq ft. And this winter quite a number of them have failed, some with dairy cattle in them. All the engineering seems to be "static load" with the load spread evenly across the roof. The wind and weather of a particular storm do not obey the even loading rules. And once a single structural member fails, the rest is just like dominos going down.

I generally build to the "brick outhouse building code", but our snow/ice load was so great this winter that I put in temporary load supports (poles) is suspected overload spots. I don't know if they made a difference, but I did have better peace of mind. And my son and I shoveled off deeper than above my knee-cap snow and ice. My guess was more than 40#/sq ft we were shoveling. We moved a lot of tons of snow/ice. Our main barn is 40' X 85'. The roof's skylight panels were and are still sagging, nearing collapse.

Glad all your equipment and horses are OK.

Paul in MN

Nancy: They call this live and learn and it sure can hurt.
gitrib

The TV has shown a number of roof collapse in the DFW area due to the snowfall. I never thought we'd see such a phenomena in that part of Texas. I'm glad that you suffered no serious damage. How about a pic of the horse trailer. C.L.