Agricultural and equipment storage buildings in Amity Township

Whether agricultural and equipment storage buildings is the right call in Amity Township comes down to the parcel and what has to fit inside.

How this normally starts

• Hay stored under tarps and losing value every wet month
• Equipment wintering outside because the old bank barn can't take modern machinery
• An older barn that costs more to patch each year than it's worth

Why this comes up in Amity Township

Here's what makes Amity Township particular: the ground here drains south into the French Creek system rather than north to the lake, and the low ground follows the creek bottoms.

Amity Township is a small, sparsely settled farm township in the southeastern corner of the county near Union City, and that shapes what gets built here.

Practicalities in Amity Township

Very open parcels with excellent room to work; the practical questions are road distance and driveway condition.

Permits go through Amity Township, and Pennsylvania requires any contractor performing $5,000 or more of home improvement work a year to hold a state registration.

What the work involves

Farm buildings are usually quoted by footprint and use: machine storage wants tall sidewalls and wide door openings, hay wants ventilation, and livestock housing adds interior work. Buildings used solely for agriculture are exempt from most PA Uniform Construction Code permitting, which a builder who works farms will know how to document.

Sidewall height is the number that decides the building

Almost every farm building that gets outgrown was outgrown vertically. A 12-foot sidewall clears most tractors and a pickup with a topper. A combine with the head off, a tall-sided dump trailer, or a telehandler with the boom stowed wants 16 feet, and a grain rig or a lifted sprayer can want 18. Sidewall height is cheap to add at framing and close to impossible to add later, because raising the eave means new columns, new trusses and new steel.

Post spacing, embedment and the frost line

Post-frame buildings carry the roof on columns rather than on a continuous wall, so the spacing of those columns is the structural decision. Eight feet on centre is the standard across the trade. Lighter agricultural loads sometimes allow 10 or 12 feet, which saves posts and holes; a heavy snow specification pushes the other way, to six feet, or keeps eight-foot spacing and puts more truss into the building instead.

The earlier a builder sees it, the more options tend to still be open.