So long story short. I had an old shop that burned down a few years ago, the building was built on a stem wall with a dirt floor and I poured a nice concrete floor and really fixed it up. The old building was a 30x40x10 all out of pipe and angle iron, I am wanting to add onto it and rebuild a 40x60x16 shop. My question is, if I am going back up with a bigger building would I be alright using the old stem wall for new piers/posts? The location of the shop and the slope of my property I feel I need a stem wall around the entire building to help divert water. My thoughts were cut off the old anchor bolts (since they went through a fire they are most likely brittle) then drill and use concrete anchors. I have access to a lot of pipe, so I planned to use 6" pipe for my posts and try to build my own trusses our of 2" or 3" pipe.
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DIY 40x60 shop
- Thread starter J2 weld
- Start date
I wouldn't worry about the fasteners at base of columns. They are usually relatively low alloy and won't be bothered by some temperature excursions. what you do need to watch out for is if the concrete got hot enough for the rebar inside to expand and crack the main bulk. If that happened you need to break apart and re-cast. One of the many downsides to steel rebar. My back yard shop burned 40 years ago and I re-used the slab (new footings outside) with no problems of any kind (except for the expanded shop with no room to go any further becoming too small).
AC-WC
Well-known member
I was pretty confident mom's perimeter foundation was still in good shape after her barn fire but I had it inspected by a licensed engineer to verify. It was great telling the permit office they were full of it after I showed them the report when we rebuilt 2 yrs ago. Her barn was a Versatube building and none of the sill plates were hot/rusted but when the new building went up the crew just drilled normal screw anchors.
I am pretty confident the old pad is good, I mean it cracked from the fire which is to be expected. I did have a local concrete guy look at it and he didn’t seem too concerned. I am mainly debating on using the existing stem wall and just tying into it with the new section to get me the 40x60 or taking it out and putting in new. The original anchor bolts look like the galvanized bolts with square nuts that electric cooperatives use on their poles (I have a whole pile these too) also debating if maybe they’re still usable. The original shop I’m guessing was built in the 60s-70s all out of oil field pipe, I had it spray foamed which is why it burned the way it did!