Large farming equipment and rapid throughput require oversized floor space in modern agricultural facilities. The days of using post-frame building kits to construct small-scale farming buildings are long gone. Transitioning from interior post supports to an engineered clear-span agricultural building allows designers to remove interior load-bearing columns or support posts from the floor plan. Without these obstructions, farm managers can customize their interior layout with more flexibility.
Maximizing your available square footage becomes incredibly valuable when operating in heavy-duty applications. By deleting any physical barriers from your floor plan, you reduce costly collision incidents and streamline daily operations.
Need extra room for livestock housing? Storing bulky grain? Or parking your multi-million dollar harvest equipment? Clear-span building design gives you the open floor plan necessary to adjust your square footage to your needs.
Maximize Interior Space in Commercial Chicken Coops
A climate-controlled environment, automated feeding troughs, and high-speed mechanical cleaning between livestock flocks are just a few of today’s standard poultry farm features. Custom agricultural trusses allow you to design a building with a wide-open ceiling surface. This clear overhead space allows you to hang automated feeding and water lines at an even height throughout the entire structure.
Installing a high-clearance roof truss also removes any interior posts that could obstruct your mechanical chicken coop cleaning machines. Not only does this open structure maximize your usable space, but it also minimizes employee activity, reducing the spread of illness. The even overhead clearance also allows air to circulate more freely — which reduces moisture buildup from animal congestion.
Provide More Comfort for Dairy Cows
Cow comfort is highly dependent on strategic cross ventilation, wide alleyways, and maximizing free stall dimensions. By installing high-bridged agricultural trusses, you can create the tall open space needed to accommodate industrial-sized overhead fans.
HVLS Fans, or high-volume low-speed fans, are industrial-grade circulation fans used to regulate temperature inside a cow barn. Without interior columns getting in the way, facility managers are able to design streamlined paths for automated feed pushers and manure scrapers. Increasing cow comfort reduces animal stress and allows for faster milking rotations, decreasing traffic patterns during peak hours.
Store your Large Equipment Safely
Think about how large today’s tractors, combines, and seeding equipment continue to become. You can no longer efficiently use old equipment sheds with interior support posts. Large equipment requires even larger clear bays to safely enter the building, maneuver around, and perform mechanical repairs.
With a building layout that has no interior posts, you won’t have to worry about backing your equipment trailer straight up against the building. Cleaning around support beams increases the likelihood of accidentally damaging your building. Plus, if you plan on installing an overhead bridge crane for mechanical equipment repairs, you’ll thank yourself later for having the extra overhead clearance.
Ensure Safe Riding Surfaces for Indoor Arenas
Think about how dangerous a single interior column can be if a horse and rider were to run into it while training at speed. Equine facilities need to provide wide-open safety for both the rider and horse. Riding arenas also typically host large public events. Increasing your acreage allows for more horses to rent the arena space.
Unlike outdoor arenas, indoor versions do not have natural breezes to help your horses cool down. A clear-span building layout allows you to evenly install industrial-grade sprinkler systems throughout the ceiling. Riders also need good visibility of the arena rails to safely train at speed.
Agricultural Building Challenges
Building a long-lasting farm structure is no easy task. Nature dumps heavy rainfall, snow, and wind on agricultural buildings year-round. It’s also important to remember that agricultural buildings have unique structural demands compared to standard residential or commercial buildings.
They must also be able to handle extreme internal moisture and corrosive gases. Farm managers want buildings that allow for natural air circulation, but also protect their livestock and equipment from the elements. Let’s take a look at some of the challenges that are addressed with building agriculture lean-tos.
Avoid Heavy Equipment Access Issues
Imagine finally assembling that new piece of farm equipment you bought, but it doesn’t fit through the front door. The frustrating reality is that every time your equipment doesn’t fit easily into the storage bay, you’re left with something exposed to the elements. The more often you’re forced to leave your equipment outdoors, the faster it will lose value.
When designing your building, make sure you leave enough space at entrances for your equipment to fit through. You should also design your facility with enough space so the equipment can easily turn around.
Streamline Daily Cow Traffic
When housing a large number of animals in close proximity, it’s important to keep air circulating and moving. Indoor animal facilities should ideally have a post-free layout. This allows farm employees to create custom fence lines and alleyways that work with the flow of that particular herd or flock.
Without interior posts, workers are also less likely to bump into the supports while moving livestock, which can reduce stress on the animals. Creating straight lines of visibility will also make sorting and loading animals easier on you and your employees.
Gain Better Ventilation
Poor ventilation is a leading cause of livestock health problems. Not only does bad ventilation impact your animals, but it also causes your building to deteriorate at a faster rate.
While under-lighter snow loads may not seem like much of a concern, snow loves to stick to flat surfaces. Your roof trusses should have enough vertical height to promote thermal buoyancy. Hot air will rise and replace the cold air being pulled into your building through ridge vents. A poorly ventilated barn causes ammonia and moisture to settle in the air and space where your animals live.
Allow for Future Flexibility
Take notice of how agricultural technology seems to change every other year. What may be sufficient for storage now may need to be a high-throughput feed mill in the near future. Planning for the future by building with flexibility in mind will save you time and money.
An open span building layout allows you to drastically change your interior without compromising the structural integrity of your building.
High-Span Wood Trusses Explained
When designing high-quality wood trusses for agricultural applications, there are a few different factors to consider. Just like designing a residential roof truss, agricultural building trusses need to hold up a roof. The difference is that farm building trusses don’t typically have support in the middle of the structure coming up from the ground.
By adding a tall enough truss, you can create wide open, clear spans.
The top of the truss has a triangular shape, which allows the loads applied to the roof to be distributed out toward the exterior walls. Every piece, from the truss gusset plates to the southern yellow pine wood used for the bottom chord, has been carefully selected to handle these loads.
Latco Truss uses world-class software to create accurate stress grades for each member in a truss. We are able to analyze every single point of the truss and visualize how each member interacts with the others. Using our advanced software, we make sure your roof truss or floor truss passes local building code requirements.
Benefits of Clear-Span Design
Whether you’re transitioning from a post-frame building to a clear-span building or just starting the design process, understanding how an open building interior can improve daily operations is crucial. Here are some benefits you’ll experience when switching over to a farm building trusses system.
Store More Large Equipment
Do you know how many times you’ve wished you had another row of farm equipment, but you’d have to build another building? Clear building layouts give you the ability to customize your space to your exact needs.
With no interior columns to work around, you can pull your service truck straight up next to your combines for offseason maintenance. You could also use the extra space to install parking guidelines, increasing your equipment storage density.
House More Animals
Cleaning out your entire farm building floor becomes drastically easier with a clear-span floor truss design. Skid steers and front-end loaders can drive in straight lines while hosing down the entire floor. Post-free construction not only improves air quality for your animals but it also reduces labor costs by simplifying daily cleaning procedures.
Improve Daily Workflow
Removing any physical barriers within your building will make daily tasks like feeding, loading, and inspecting your animals that much easier. Feed wagons can drive directly down the center aisle without restrictions. This allows feed to be distributed evenly to every animal you own.
Depressing the amount of time employees spend shuffling animals around the building allows you to downsize your staff and save on employee wages.
Increase Ventilation
Good ventilation is key to keeping your animals happy and healthy. All that fresh air will circulate better because you have tall clearance and your ceiling isn’t interrupted by any gusset plates or support posts. An open-web design allows air to flow horizontally across your ceiling.
This helps prevent moisture buildup on your structural members. Although moisture may not seem like a big deal for your cows, it’s a leading cause of lung infections.
Design with Durability in Mind
Across Texas, Arkansas, Missouri and Oklahoma, building your agricultural facility means preparing for extreme weather. From snowfall in the winter months to unpredictable straight-line winds and humid summers. There are a few key details you can specify while designing your structure to fight against weathering and decay.
Agricultural Design Checklist
- Can it withstand 115+ MPH winds?
- Do the steel plates have zinc coating?
- Is there a raised heel to allow for insulation?
- Is a vapor barrier installed?
Engineer For Heavy Winds and Snow Loads
Whether you live in areas of Oklahoma that experience massive straight-line winds or you receive heavy snowfall each year in Missouri. Agricultural buildings need to be prepared for abnormal localized weather. Our designers take into account high wind and snow areas when choosing the correct lumber grade, truss spacing, and bracing requirements.
Increasing the quality of lumber used and decreasing truss spacing are just a couple of ways we ensure your roof won’t deflect when Mother Nature hits your building with tons of snow or heavy winds.
Plan For Moisture
Did you know that the air inside a crowded animal building contains high levels of both humidity and ammonia? Ammonia is created when microbes digest livestock urine and break it down into a gas. While cow breath may smell like ammonia to you, it can eat away at unprotected steel elements like gusset plates.
Specifying a commercial vapor barrier, using pressure-treated wood wherever it comes into contact with concrete masonry, and specifying galvanized steel plates will help you fight against moisture.
Invest in Heavy-Duty Construction
Your equipment weighs tons, and your animals love to scratch up against pretty much anything. Make sure your building can stand up to the abuse by specifying high-strength wood trusses. It may cost you a little extra money upfront, but long-steel building components will save you money in maintenance and help you retain a high resale value.
Partner with Latco Truss | High-Span Roof Truss Experts
At Latco Truss, we pride ourselves on manufacturing high-quality roof and floor trusses. Customize your clear-span agriculture building with Latco Truss and streamline your operations for years to come. Shift your design process into our automated factory, where we’ll help you lower labor costs and waste.
Contact Latco Truss today to see how we can build structurally sound truss products that you can count on for your next agricultural project.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q. How long a clear-span can I build with agricultural trusses?
Our engineered wood trusses can span up to 80 feet or more. By using high-density southern yellow pine lumber and heavy-gauge steel connector plates, we are able to transfer the loads from your roof directly to the exterior walls.
Q. Are wood trusses durable enough for harsh livestock environments?
Yes! In fact, wood trusses have a number of benefits when operating in areas with high levels of humidity and livestock. Not only does wood provide incredible strength even under extreme loads, but it also holds up better than untreated steel when exposed to ammonia.
Q. Can I add clear-span roof trusses to my existing post building?
Absolutely! Our roof trusses can be customized to fit and anchor to your existing building profile or concrete footer. Adding additional clear span roof trusses is a great way to increase your storage capacity or modernize older buildings.