My dad is looking at a Future Steel building an S style Quansite for a machine shed/ my shop.So I want to know if anybody else has had one or knows of someone who has one.Any replys will be helpfull thanks.This is the one he is currently looking at similar to these:Future Steel Buildings

 

Don't have one but have worked out of them. If you decide to heat it, use infrared, or you'll need to move a lot of air to keep the thing circulating. One guy that I worked for had an old oil furnace in his and the heat just rose right to the ceiling, I still froze my tail off on the ground.

 

I am probably going to use a wood burning stove to keep the shop warm.If I use that then I should have less problems with that and wood heat is good heat.So you thought they were pretty good for shops then.

 

Yeah, for what I was doing in them, which was basically just fixing farm equipment. The airfield here uses the bigger ones for hangers for the small planes. A wood stove will help, but remember the cubic footage in these things is expansive. You'll want a few ceiling fans to move the air. The guy that did my shop told me a ceiling fan for every 20x20 area, bigger if you go with the industrial fans. My 250K BTU WMO furnace moves a lot of air when its on, and warms the shop quickly (roughly 50x80 with 14ft ceilings), but once it kicks off, within 20 minutes the bottom 5-6ft are cold already. If I keep the ceiling fans going it keeps the furnace from kicking on again a lot longer.

Wood heat is cheap heat, not good heat. Heat is heat, whether its from wood, oil, gas, or electric, it all does the same thing. The problem with wood heat is it takes so long to move air without using a OWB or Forced Air Wood Burner.

 

How about in floor heat. I would think that would work real nice in one.

 

I got one a these that I use for my main barn/shop.

The good points to it are that when it comes to weather they are indestructible. Mines been through two tornado's, direct hits. took both wooden ends off the building and lifted it straight up off the ground and set it back down but didn't damage a single panel on the steel itself. I built it on a 4 foot wooden pedestal side walls for added height.

On the bad side, because of the contours it impossible to partition off sections of it to heat or for high dust areas, in my case a paint booth area and actually close them off.

 

Radiant in floor heat would be the cats pajama's, and he could do it with PEX tubing and an OWB (Outside Wood Boiler), but it'd be $$$.

Bubba, One of my customers made a paint booth in his with 12mil plastic sheeting, its not great, but it works. He had some kind of portable air scrubber to keep fresh air coming in it. The guy won awards for his paint work. I actually worked with him at Dana in the Rapid Prototyping department, he was kind of a tool for a boss, but the guy knew what he was doing. Duct tape, and a few hundred feet of clear plastic sheeting and he had a decent paint booth to work in.

 

I did something similar in my woodworking shop I used to rent. It had 24" bar joists for the roof at 13'6 to the bottom of them and I just took some 6 mil plastic sheeting and used a squeeze clamp and some twine at every bar joist (I think about 5-6 ft apart). I could go in and spray some lacquer and go out and run the shaper, tablesaw, aka. make shitloads of dust and never had an issue with the finish. But, I guess lacquer and auto paint are two different ball games.

 

Not really... As long as you keep things ventilated your alright. The new waterborn paints are a lot safer, but still take years off your life IMO.

Ben,
I would get an estimate for a pole barn, and compare it to the price and assembly of the Future Steel building.

 

If you contact the company and express interest in a building but don't buy it, just wait. They will call you in the near future and make you an offer. The story will be that they have one that a deposit was put down on but now they don't want the building and will sell it to you and deduct the deposit money already paid on it off your cost. It's a scam they all run all the time on these buildings.

And don't fall for the story that you can assemble the arches on the ground and lift them into place. It doesn't happen unless you have a whole crew and plenty of lifting equipment. They have to be put up piece by piece in the air. I had to rent a lift to do this with. I twisted a whole section of arch tryin to do it their quick and easy way.