Metal Buildings

Buildings made of metal, particularly steel, have been popular alternatives to traditional structures for the last half century. Though commonly used in construction as support girders for well over a century, metal did not become a popular building material until the Second World War, when the U.S. army commissioned thousands of transportable steel hangers and sheds for wartime efforts.

This sparked a general trend of metallic construction, and today metal is used in a wide variety of edifices, ranging from industrial buildings such as warehouses and garages, to retail businesses, to community centers such as churches. Metal buildings are cheap, require relatively little time to erect, and are naturally highly resilient.

Simple Metal Buildings

Simple metal buildings can usually be purchased in pre-built packages, and are similar in design to the well-known Quonset huts used by the U.S. military, with a semicircular arch, fairly limited internal space, and doors placed in the far ends. They are easy to assemble, but lack flexibility.

Complex Metal Buildings

More sophisticated metal buildings are usually purchased through contractors, who help the client make general architectural decisions, handle the procuring of the materials, and oversee the structure's assembly, all the while ensuring that it obeys various building codes.

The metal sections themselves are commissioned by a factory, which shapes them to the precise dimensions that the client specifies, along with the supports and fasteners which help keep one metal panel connected to another. It is then shipped to the construction site and assembled by the contractor's building team. Most often the metal building is placed atop a flat concrete foundation, the creation of which the contractor will also oversee. He or she will also be responsible for the addition of any interior partitions desired within the building.

Clear-Span and Multi-Span Metal Buildings

Metal buildings are commonly classified as either multi-span or clear-span: the former being supported by numerous large interior columns, the latter being supported with a reinforced frame.

Multi-span buildings make use of less expensive materials, and because of the lighter strain on their framework can form much longer structures such as strip malls. Their downside is that the support columns may be excessively bulky or awkward.

By contrast, a clear-span building is more expensive and cannot be built to widths much greater than 150-feet. However, such a building makes better use of the internal space allotted to it because of the lack of floor area dedicated to supports. This can be a vital feature when floor space is at a premium; for example, in warehouses.

Advantages of Metal Buildings

The construction of metal buildings is not very labor-intensive, nor does it require particularly expensive materials. As a result, raising a metal building may cost as little as one-third of the price of raising a standard building of the equivalent size. In addition, because metal buildings are formed of pre-assembled components, they can most commonly be erected in two or three months, and because such components are usually made from reinforced steel, they will be guaranteed to stand for twenty to thirty years.

By Matthew Ingalls