Industrial/Warehouse- Metal Building Terminology
A few days a week, I catch myself looking through the commercial forum for articles or posts of people making investments or asking questions on industrial/warehouse style buildings. With the lack of information on the BP forums, I am devoting one day a week to providing more information on these type of investments to the BP Community.
While warehouse and industrial-style buildings can be made up of many different types of materials, including block and bar joist, structural steel, tilt-wall concrete and wood, the make-up I am going to be specifically discussing is pre-engineered metal buildings. Metal buildings are considered the most popular solution to low-rise commercial building construction. A few of the benefits of this type of system include
- Design and fabrication from a single source manufacturer.
- Materials come pre-punched with each piece marked for quick construction.
- The interior and exterior elements can be easily altered to accommodate the end user’s choice of cladding.
- Minimal waste
- Building packages come with an engineer stamp of the state in which the building is located.
With that being said we are going to start with some basic building terminology, so that the next time you go inspect a warehouse or consult with a contractor you will both be speaking the same language!
As you can see from the above picture, the metal paneling of the building is pulled back revealing the framing members and their proper names. One thing to note about a metal building is that this picture depicts a gable style building, but the pieces can easily be re-configured to form a single slope or lean-to structure.
An item not listed on this page and one I see mentioned in several posts are the clear heights and what that actually is on a metal building. If you notice the two center frames on the building, you will see that they are much larger than the one at the end. Reason being is that these frames are carrying half the load of the roof on each side of the frame. The clear height is measured from the finished floor to the underside of one of these frames where the column and rafter come together. So, while this area is much shorter, note that this only occurs every 20’-30’ on metal buildings so your height actually steps back up everywhere else.
Well, this concludes the 1st of my weekly post. Be sure to check back next week as we continue to deep dive into industrial/warehouse investments. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out.