Out on the west side of Davis County and into Weber County's rural pockets — West Point, Hooper, Plain City, South Weber — big lots are a way of life. So are the buildings that come with them: shops, hay barns, equipment sheds, oversized garages, and the occasional horse facility. They're some of our favorite projects because the engineering is real and the clients tend to know what they want. Here's what's actually involved.
What needs engineering
For practical purposes, any shop or pole barn in Davis or Weber County over about 200 sq ft needs both a building permit and engineered plans. The exact thresholds vary slightly by city, but the universal rules are: anything with a real foundation, anything over a few feet in height, anything in a setback-controlled zone, and anything that might cause a problem if it fell on something gets engineered. If your project is north of "small detached storage shed" you need engineering.
The four pieces of a pole barn engineering package
1. The pole frame
Pole barns are built around large vertical posts (the "poles"), usually pressure-treated wood, set into the ground on concrete piers or footing blocks. The pole spacing, diameter, embedment depth, and connection to the footing all need to be designed for the specific loads.
2. The truss system
Long-span trusses are the structural heart of a shop. A 40 ft clear span supporting a snow load of 35-45 psf is a real engineering problem. The truss manufacturer will provide stamped truss drawings for the trusses themselves, but someone still has to spec the right truss type for your loads and connect them properly to the pole frame.
3. The lateral system
Pole barns are tall, light structures with big wall areas, which means they catch a lot of wind. The west side of Davis County in particular gets steady wind off the Great Salt Lake, and the lateral design has to account for it. Diagonal bracing, knee braces, and (in larger shops) shear walls or steel cross-bracing are all part of the lateral package.
4. The anchor system
How the building attaches to its footings has to handle uplift from wind and lateral force from both wind and seismic. This is where a lot of "kit" pole barns are weak — generic connection details don't account for project-specific loads.
Why snow load matters more than people think
A 40-foot truss span sees a lot of accumulated snow. At 35 psf, a 40x60 ft pole barn has roughly 84,000 lbs of design snow load on the roof. That has to come down through the trusses, into the poles, into the footings, and into the soil. Undersize any one element and you have a failure cascade waiting for a heavy winter.
We design with the actual ground snow load for your specific elevation, not a generic regional value. For Davis County valley lots that's around 38-40 psf. For higher lots in Morgan or Eden it can be much more.
Permits and process
For most shops and pole barns in our service area, the process is:
- Confirm zoning allows the structure on your lot
- Get an engineering package (us)
- Get truss drawings from the manufacturer
- Submit to the city or county building department
- Build under inspection
Engineering fees for typical shops are $1,200-$2,500 depending on size and complexity. We turn around most packages in 1-3 weeks. See our commercial services page or our West Point and Hooper location pages for more.