Steel Buildings/ Building a Garage

[rob07002]

Any guys have expeirence with steel buildings or some other pre-fabbed garages?

My buddy is looking to build a garage about 30x40 with 15' ceilings next to his house. Only prob is he has a $20000 budget and all the quotes he got from the steel building places are over $15000 and $6000 will be for concrete so he's over.

Any ideas or reccomendations?

Thanks

[Bigblue73]

We've been building (rather installing) pre-engineered building for a while. We have found that the pricing is comparable between companies. If a company seems less expensive, they make it up in the shipping. He did a a small outbuilding (40 x 60) for equipment storage and insulated it for under 30 grand. We bought the building from steelbuildings.com. Quality was fine.

Watch out for permits in you area. We had over 2 grand in permits on top of the build cost. Sorry I forgot that, plus the price on concrete has gone through the roof.

Are you doing the labor on the building for hiring it out?

[rob07002]

It's not for me but we will be doing the labor, or should I say I will be helping him.

He got a quote for concrete of $6000 which is real expensive IMO, and that is what is eating into the budget.

[harshman]

I suggest your buddy wait until he can move the budget up more. Do it right and you will have a garage that he will love to work in. Shorten the budget and the stress of building it will be more that the satisfaction of using it.

[JoshStratton]

Right now, 6K isnt bad for concrete. He is picking an awfully bad time to build a shop. The prices on wire alone have tripled in the last 3 years. Everything is up across the board...copper, wood, cement, etc...due to fuel prices, mining shortages, supply/demand, yadda yadda...

My dad built a 30x40x10 pole building 2 years ago for about $10k. This included cement, vinyl siding and basic electrical. Interior finishing and insulation not included. I priced that same building for myself in the Spring and it was going to run about $17K. That was with me doing all the work.

Check out this site. It is the best garage forum out there:
Garage Journal Forum (http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/)

Oh! He might also want to look into MiracleTruss.com (http://www.miracletruss.com/). I assume he wants 15 foot ceilings for a lift. With MiracleTruss, you do not need traditional trusses and you can do a 10 foot building with a much larger roof peak. This is what I will be using with my building....might be more expensive for the steel, but what he saves in extra's might be worth it.

[JoshStratton]

Ohhh boy. My wife is gonna get a call from me. MiracleTruss is running a NICE special. Check out the 30x48 building for under 12K. He could get his concrete and be under budget:

http://www.miracletruss.com/special_offers_pop.htm

[rob07002]

Josh tell me about wire, wood, etc going up big time. I'm still in the middle of finshing my basement and luckily I bought most of this stuff a few months ago, but wow I paid nealy 1/3 more at HD for wire a few weeks ago.

Cool find on the Miricle Truss place, I'll let him know about that.

My buddies Bro-in-law is a GC and even with he connections and stuff it priced out to about $24000 in materials alone and I think thats w/o electrical and plumbing.

20k sure doesn't get you far anymore...