I just bought a 100 year old barn and am in the process of converting it into a house. I want to add a silo or semi-circular room onto the barn to continue the barn “look”. How do I build a round or semi-circular room?
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Hi Bogie, welcome to Breaktime!
There are about 67.5 different ways to build round structures. What kinds of building do you have experience with? What will the function of the room be? How many stories? Stairs? Exterior finish? Interior finish? Heating system?
Welcome here!
Fill out your profile (so we can come by and bring beer!)
No, really, construction needs and standard practices vary a surprising amount by region.
I (and probably many others here) have always wanted to 'do" a barn. Play your cards right, and you can get more help and info here than you can imagine.
To your question - a faceted room with flat sides is relatively easy; round is a little tougher, but not from the framing standpoint - that's easy. Think about exterior sheathing (will sheet goods bend around your radius?) Exterior finish - wood shake or shingles are pretty easy around gentle curves; siding may or may not bend easily. Think trim and millwork - will windows (and doors) be mounted in "flats" set in the wall, or will they be curved as well ($$$)?
A conical roof is fairly straightforward; a guy named seeyou posted a good how-to and layout post for asphalt shingles in the last few weeks.
Explore and fight your way through the "advanced search" at the top of the left hand browser column. It's not very consistant, but at least you can say you've looked; that's likely the first response you'll get to a general question.
Note, there are over a hundred and six thousand threads here; we gigglingly passed the hundred thousand threads mark one evening a few months ago, as some of us tried to be the one. A million-six in posts.
Forrest - happy to be here
Edited 6/21/2008 8:16 am ET by McDesign
Edited 6/21/2008 5:10 pm ET by McDesign
a guy named seeyou posted a good how-to and layout post for asphalt shingles in the last few weeks.
We're doing a copper turret roof - about a 16' dia, IIRC - right now. We've got about 7-8 rows on. I need to get some pics.http://grantlogan.net
Who got Bo Diddley's money?
No, no, no!
Don't ya remember? The new guy buys the beer!
And 500,000 posts were by some guy named Piffen <;-)
I thought he was way beyond that by now!
got a picture of the barn?...........
Depending on your building skills, you may consider an actual silo kit--I think most are assembled on site by reps of the manufacturer, but you may also get a kit that you assemble. Butler Buildings is one manufacturer that comes to mind. The manufacturer may even be able to taylor a building to your needs.
Welcome!
Sounds like an interesting project. How about some pics as you build? We'd all love to see the progress.
Bogie,
I just built a round tower myself. What I did was make a bottom plate and two top plates out of rough sawn wood* and spaced my verticals out much closer than normal (6 inches on center) that made it extremely easy to bend 1/4 plywood around my relatively tight radius.. depending on what size Silo you want you may open those spacings up, but do remember you'll still want much closer spacing than 16"oc. use two layers of 1/4 plywood rather than one layer of 1/2 inch because bending it will be a real battle especially once you are in the air.. I sprayed the plywood down to assit in bending it but I had a 6 foot radius (12 feet across) If you are thinking of something more like 30 or 40 feet across such elaborate tricks might not be needed..
Stagger the joints in the top plates.. Use a level and a plumb bob to ensure you are started correctly
* the real trick to building in the round is making a Stick to drawing the correct radius.. What I did is take a board and drill a hole for a pencil at 6 feet and again at 6' 6" I fixed the center pivot, aligned the boards I was going to use and drew innner and outer radius at the same time.. Then I took the boards to the band saw and cut them out..
When I was done I had a tall stack of radiused top and bottom plates.. by aligning them I kept everything straight and round..