Structural Systems
Steel Truss
Open-web steel trusses with secondary framing on two-foot centers. It’s the only system we carry where the frame you buy is the frame you finish against — which is why it’s usually our answer for a barndominium.
The problem it solves
Here’s something most people don’t find out until they’re standing in a finished shell: on a steel-framed barndominium, you often frame the exterior walls twice.
Once in steel, and then again in wood on the inside of it, because you need something to hold insulation, run wiring through, and hang drywall on. That second layer costs money, it costs interior floor area, and nobody mentions it during the quote.
Steel truss framing doesn’t have that problem. Purlins and girts land on two-foot centers, which is the same spacing you’d frame a house to. Insulation fits between them. Drywall screws to them. Doors and windows go in conventionally. There’s no second wall to build.
The flush-mount version takes it further. Instead of the standard open-web column, it uses 6×6 steel posts on twelve to sixteen foot centers, and the secondary framing sits flush inside them. The interior wall plane is flat. You finish it like a house because it framed like a house.
What it looks like finished
A 34×60 with a 14 foot eave, finished out as a residence. The interior shots are the point — that’s drywall on framing, not drywall on a second wall built inside the steel.
Photographs from our manufacturing partner’s project library.
Where it wins outright
Anything with real architectural detail. This is the system that handles complication without a fight.
Gabled entries. Soffit overhangs. Mezzanines. Porches, dormers, changes in roofline — the things that turn into engineering problems on a simple frame are ordinary work here, because the framing is already at residential spacing and the trusses are designed to carry it.
If you’ve drawn a building that looks like a house rather than a box, this is almost certainly the answer. A barndominium with a covered porch and a loft is a hard project in tubular, a compromise in red iron, and a straightforward one here.
How it’s built
Open-web trusses on ten to sixteen foot centers, arriving pre-welded and pre-punched in bolt-together sections with the purlin and girt clips already attached. They go up without the lift equipment a heavier frame needs, which matters on access-limited sites and on labor cost.
Secondary framing comes two ways, and the difference is worth understanding before you compare quotes.
Cold-formed secondary
Steel purlins and girts, supplied with the kit. Everything you need arrives on the truck. Simpler to price and simpler to plan around.
Wood secondary
Dimensional lumber on the same two-foot centers, edge-mounted to welded clips. The kit includes the clips and a cut list. It does not include the lumber. You buy that locally.
That can work in your favor if lumber is cheap where you are, and it can catch you out badly if you compare that kit price against an all-in quote from another system. We’ll price the lumber into your estimate so you’re comparing the same thing.
What it costs
A basic barndominium shell runs roughly $20 to $25 per square foot for the kit. Erection is comparable to red iron or cold-formed — around $8 to $10 per square foot on a simple building, more on a finished barndominium.
Against a tubular barndominium shell at $30 to $35, that’s a meaningful difference — and you’re getting finish-ready framing rather than a shell you have to frame again.
See the full cost breakdown across all four systems.
Where it isn’t the answer
Two places, and we’ll tell you both before you get attached to it.
Simple boxes. If you want a plain rectangle to keep weather off equipment, you’re paying for capability you won’t use. Tubular steel wins the price battle up to sixty feet wide and it isn’t close.
Spans past eighty feet. Steel truss stops being cost-efficient there. Red iron is the right frame for wide, tall, open buildings, and past eighty feet it’s the only sensible answer.
Between those two — a building with detail, a building you’ll finish, a building that has to look like something — this is usually where we land.
Compare all four on the structural systems page.
Planning a barndominium?
Tell us the dimensions, what the finished space looks like in your head, and where it’s going. We’ll tell you whether this is the right frame for it.