Asked by Gary Ernst from Howell, Mi
I have an old hip roofed dairy barn that has an open haymow, no beams tieing the sides together other than the haymow floor which is resting on concrete block aprox. 7′ high.
There are posts on the walls supporting the plate at the eve. these posts are 14′ apart and the block wall is 1′ thck under the post otherwise it’s 8″ block.
My question is I have removed some of the haymow flooring for farm equipment storage. the walls are no longer tied together at the top of the block wall should I worry?
Thanks
Gary
Hi Gary,
Thank you for your question. First I would highly recomend getting a contractor out to take a look and see if you have done anything structuraly unsound.
I suspect that you have, although it depends a lot on the type of construction used in your barn.
Since you said it is an “older hip roof” I think we can most likely rule out a modern pole barn type construction.
That leaves either a timber frame barn or a plank truss style barn. Maybe a stud frame, but since you said it has posts, probably not.
It could also be a hybrid, timber frame/plank built barn. At any rate if it is a timber frame I am surprised that it did not have a tie beam, I have seen very few without one. This leads me to believe that it is either a laminated plank built barn or a laminated-timber frame hybrid.
If that is the case then you are probably ok, since those barns were built to have the load carried by the actual trusses and not depend on a tie beam.
However, I have made a lot of guesses and assumptions here to come to that conclusion, so you REALLY should get someone qualified out there just to take a look.
Thank You
-BarnGeek