Considering a Pioneer Econspan

[greg13]

I am somewhere between the dreaming and the planning stage of the new shop/garage. I am figuring 26-28x30-40. I am looking at the Econospan but question running electrical & insulation with the corrugated steel inside. And to complicate matters I am in a flood zone that will require about 4' of rise to be 100% FEMA compliant. Any thoughts?

 

[JamesW84]

look at their gallery: https://pioneersteel.com/gallery.php?type=econospan

Looks like some have used the blanket insulation. One guy has sheathing on the lower portion of his walls, so you could do that and run wiring behind it and have normal cut outs for outlets; you could just do metal conduit for your wiring. Spray foam would be possible for insulation, but it can get expensive.

If you have to bring in fill to raise your land, make sure it's compacted well.

 

[txvwnut]

I’ve got a Steel Master version but I believe both are made by Future Steel out of Canada. In a solid days work you can have a finished roof and two walls up. After a solid weeks worth of work you can have all the bolts tightened. Actually it takes about a day or at least it took me a day hit all of mine. Since I’m in a city and had to meet building codes with a certain amount of masonry I stick built my end walls so I could attach my masonry. I insulated mine with 1” foam board since I got a truckload of it for free, it’s attached flat up against the walls. I’m in Texas so I’m not as cold as the OP in winter but it doesn’t take long to get it to comfortable temp during the winter months.

 

[greg13]

I plan on running everything electrical in conduit, I am just thinking that to anchor the conduit I would have to drill through the wall for bolts and create a leak source. Since the walls are corrugated, fiberglass insulation would be tough to secure so that really only leaves spray foam for an even depth. Since I can't see a full 2' above flood stage for full FEMA requirement I may fill to street level and install flood vents.

The pioneer rep called as I was typing and they use "special" bolts to attach conduit & insulation to. Threw a ballpark price of $14-16k for the building without talking specifics. A little higher than I was expecting.

 

[JamesW84]

The ones in the pictures I linked didn't have spray foam. You'd probably have over 10k just in spray foam. Sometimes they'll get back to you with "returns, cancels" etc that are steeply discounted, just may not be the exact size you wanted.

I'd think long and hard before I put a bunch of money in one of those. Resale might be kinda dicey. Just my opinion.