Room inside a pole barn.

[jhtownsend]

I am planning on building a climate controlled room on the back half of a 24 x 40 pole barn with 10ft side walls on a concrete pad. I live in north Alabama and I am a complete novice. Just wanted to get some opinions and different approaches on how to achieve this. My goal is to have a place to store and play guitars, drums etc. My main issue I'm concerned with is the ceiling. Should I support it from the walls I build (large span) or could I use something lightweight (sheet metal) on the trusses or is there a better way that I haven't even considered. Thanks

 

[chad215]

I'm doing something similar in my build. I'm just studding out the walls with 2x4 and using typical ceiling joists sized according to span.. No real support from the main building other than a little help with racking in the walls. If you attach to the trusses or main building, make sure the trusses or wall members are designed for the load. Also, when using typical joists, you can insulate pretty easily. With the instruments being stored in there I'd be very concerned with humidity. I already fight rust on my guitar strings when they're in my climate controlled house.
Others may have a better method than me though.

 

[sjvicker]

I'd start with the floors. Do you know if you have a vapor barrier under your slab? If there is one or you dont know I'd do the test where you tape a square of plastic on your slab and see if you have moisture coming up.

I have musicians in my family that just built an amazing pole building with a metal skinned interior and they found that the echo is so bad they can't practice in there.

If I was in your situation I would build my own ceiling structure independent of the trusses so they have no additional load on them.

 

[jhtownsend]

They put plastic down when they poured the concrete so I assume there is a vapor barrier but that shows how much of a novice I am. Good call-out on the sound reflection on a metal ceiling. Now I need to figure out how I'm gonna span ceiling joist on a 24x20 room. I could always make it smaller I guess but l like the thought of a big room.

 

[930dreamer]

Look on Youtube for framing a room inside a shop for the basics.

 

[billconner]

Avoid parallel walls to minize echo. 5 degrees apart will solve a lot.

 

[dcg9381]

Climate controlled - so how will you insulate (mainly the ceiling)? Simplest way is to use the existing roof structure and spray foam, but it's not the least expensive way. If you're not doing it that way, you'll need to build something to handle insulation. If your span is pretty long, you can use trusses or use a combination of an LVL and joists to reduce the span.

 

[NUTTSGT]

Why put up a separate ceiling ? You already have 10' ceiling height in the building, no reason to spend extra money to lower it to 8'.

What are your trusses set on for spacing now ? 4' or 8' ?