Category Archives: Projects
Garages Keep Your “Summer Fun” Vehicles Shaded and Secure
Whether you like to hit the road in an RV, go off-road on a ATVs or dirt bike, or take to the water in your boat or personal watercraft, summer is a great time to enjoy the outdoors. All these vehicles are an investment in summer fun for you and your family – and steel buildings are ideal as garages to store, maintain and protect your investment.
Customize the perfect size
Our steel building kits are 100 percent customizable to accommodate vehicles of all shapes and sizes, and designed to store one vehicle or many. With clear spans up to 225 feet across and customizable ceiling heights and roof pitches, there’s virtually no vehicle our steel garages can’t hold. We can help you design the perfect building for you, from a small garage for your personal fishing boat, or a large-scale structure for your commercial fishing business.
Built to last
You already know steel structures unmatched strength and durability. But steel also offers great resistance to wear and tear from the elements compared to other building materials like wood. We manufacture all of our trusses ourselves using American-made steel, dip them in a rust-proof coating and inspected to ensure the highest quality. And, our sheet metal is designed to maintain its appearance regardless of weather conditions. So let us know what elements your garage needs to withstand – our kits can be designed for any snow or wind load in the U.S., with truss framing backed by our 50-year warrant.
Flexible financing
We understand you need a shelter for your summer vehicle now, not later. Because we build every kit at our own factory, you avoid the “middle man” mark-up, making our steel building kits an affordable, high-quality option. However, if it makes more sense to finance your garage kit, we are here to help. Our Building Consultants can not only guide you through the design process, but can discuss financing options available and arrange the one that works best for you.
Check out examples on the “Steel Buildings” tab, and give us a call to learn more. A Worldwide Steel Building will make sure your summer vehicles have it made in the shade.
Let us know how we can help keep your vehicles shaded and secure! For more information about metal building kits contact us, or start designing your building with our online 3D Building Designer Tool by clicking the image below.
Beat the Heat: AC for Metal Buildings
Summer is officially here – but we don’t need to tell you that. Cities across the country have been experiencing record heat and high temperatures, and there’s not much relief in sight … fall is still months away. It’s hot out there!
Fortunately, air conditioning is available pretty much everywhere, and that certainly includes inside steel buildings. Each of our metal building kits is completely customizable to accommodate the specific climate control needs of your building usage. Keep in mind, when you’re considering an HVAC system for your metal building, an AC unit probably won’t cut it. It will get cold again (I know, it feels hard to believe) and you want to be prepared.
Flexibility to Incorporate Building Systems
Whether you want to air condition the office space within a hybrid warehouse/office structure, or provide climate control for your entire garage, workshop, or single-family steel home, you can plan and lay out your own HVAC (as well as power and other systems) for part or all of your building kit. Need a little help determining what your building needs? Our experienced customer service team can work with you to understand your HVAC and systems needs and customize your building kit to achieve them, with maximum energy efficiency in mind.
Design Elements to Help You Keep Your Cool
While a central HVAC heating system and cooling system is the primary means of keeping things cool in the warm weather (and vice versa), some of the most basic design elements can also be used to help manage climate and air circulation in your steel building:
- Doorways/openings: With clear span buildings 24-225 feet, our steel building kits allow for large garage door openings on multiple sides of the building to provide cross-ventilation. This is most often a consideration when designing the exterior walls of commercial buildings.
- Windows: Another obvious, but important element: Worldwide Steel Buildings’ clear span designs also allow you to place windows to maximize (or minimize) natural light and ventilation based on your specific building site. Homeowners in particular should consider the climate aspects of their prefab steel building kits. When the weather is pleasant, don’t underestimate the power of opening those windows to circulate some fresh air!
- Ceilings/roofs: The open design of our building kits means you can customize the ceiling height and roof pitch to allow heat to rise to the top of your building, vent out of your building and away from your belongings, equipment – and from you. Our building kits also allow ductwork to distribute warm and cool air throughout every square foot of your building.
- Insulation: While much of the energy-efficient climate control is inherent to the properties and design of your steel building, insulation systems make a major impact, too. Whether you opt for loose-fill, blown-in, batt and roll, reflective insulation, radiant barriers or spray foam, your building can accommodate it.
Let us know how we can help you design a building with an adequate heating and AC system, so your new project stays comfortable all year round. And for now … stay cool!
For more information about the benefits of Worldwide Steel metal building kits, contact us today. You can also start designing your building with our online 3D Building Designer Tool!
Customer Success Spotlight: Wings of Faith Ministries
Our goal at Worldwide Steel Buildings is to provide our customers high-quality, affordable steel building kits customized to their unique needs or purpose. We love to share our customers’ stories and the great things they are doing with our products:
Wings of Faith: “Real People Meeting Real Needs”
Wings of Faith Ministries provides ongoing support and donations to missionaries serving mainly Native American populations in California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, as well as communities in Appalachian West Virginia. Their volunteer light aircraft pilots make more than 60 flights a year to bring food, clothing, medical supplies, and other aid to those who need it.
Several years ago, Wings of Faith purchased one of our steel building kits to house supplies and donations awaiting distribution to the communities they serve. Jim Yost, who coordinates logistics and deliveries for Wings of Faith, shared these thoughts and photos:
“Our building from Worldwide has proved absolutely invaluable in serving the very poor of the Native American reservations of the Four Corners area. I cannot imagine doing what we do without it. In May 2018, we moved over 50,000 pounds of supplies through this building.”
Thanks to Jim for sharing your story, and for the great work your organization is doing to help others! To learn more about Wings of Faith, visit flywithwings.org.
How are you using YOUR Worldwide Steel Building? Let us know – we’d love to hear from you!
Metal Building Wedding Venue and Event Spaces: ‘Tis the Season
Summer is here, and wedding bells are ringing. Thanks to the generally pleasant weather, June, August, September, and October are the most popular months for weddings in the U.S., as well as other large gatherings, like family reunions, outdoor concerts or community events.
When it comes time to plan one of these big events (“big” in both attendance and importance), the event venue is one of the first decisions you need to make before you say “I do.” The wedding venue not only sets the tone for your budget but for the look and feel of the wedding day itself.
If you’re struggling to find the perfect wedding venue — one that’s in a great location, beautiful, big enough to hold your loved ones and won’t kill the budget? Consider building one instead!
Designing and building your own venue for a wedding ceremony and wedding reception has so many benefits: not only will your big day be completely unique (who else can say they’re holding their ceremony somewhere that nobody else ever has), but after the wedding is over, you can start renting out the event space to other people and making a return on your investment.
Turn to Worldwide Steel for your Perfect Wedding Venue
Our high-quality steel building kits are fully customizable and an affordable way to create an event space tailored to your needs. Whether you own catering or special event business and want to offer customers a dedicated wedding/event space; your church wants to add or do renovations on a reception hall, or you’re a proud parent wanting to create a custom space for your daughter’s (or son’s) dream wedding, we are here to help.
Wide Open Spaces
Because they don’t need columns, our prefab recreational steel structures offer clear spans from 24 feet to 225 feet, giving you usable space across the floor (care to dance, anyone?) and all the way up to the peak. You can choose your floor plans to be fully enclosed (and then converted into barn homes after the big day), semi-enclosed (which provides natural light with an enclosed kitchen, restrooms and bridal suite, which is common for an event barn), or open air (which gives the feel of an outdoor wedding with protection from any potential rain). No matter how many square feet you need to accommodate your loved ones, you can design the perfect event center with Worldwide Steel.
Durable and Economical
Steel building kits are a convenient and quicker alternative than traditional construction – and generally much more affordable. However, the value of our DIY custom metal buildings comes not just from the budget but from their quality, durability, and ease of assembly. We manufacture our own trusses, which are welded in precision jigs for accuracy, double dipped in a rust-proof coating, and inspected to ensure your structure will stand the test of time.
Finishing Touches for a Perfect Space
Both our interiors and exteriors are fully customizable with various styles, colors, and finishes to ensure your event space is not only functional, but attractive. So no matter whether you want an indoor or outdoor ceremony, it will be against a beautiful backdrop with the help of Worldwide Steel.
Our customer service team will work closely with you to design your space inside and out, from \ electrical, water and HVAC, to layout, interior walls, overhangs, porches and pergolas, and finishes ranging from wood to stone to stucco. Want a country-feel rustic wedding? Our Gambrel barn specialists can help you create a classic look and charm for your space.
For more information about metal building kits, contact us, or start designing your building with our online 3D Building Designer Tool by clicking the image below.
How a Steel Building Turned an Outdoor Pool into a Year-Round Retreat
At Worldwide Steel Buildings, we’re always amazed at the uses our customers come up with for our outstanding buildings. Check out this steel building kit that makes swimming a year-round activity. Here’s what the customer had to say about it:
The steel structure is incredibly strong and stable. We can get up to 1.5 feet of snow in our area and the frame can easily handle that weight load. We also can get high winds here and the structure hasn’t budged an inch.
It is also very unique in appearance: the frame inside of the pool space has a geometric look that blends well with the rounded style of our pool. Externally, the frame has a clean look and gives very nice ‘curb appeal’. The steel frame design itself makes it very easy to safely mount any kind of accoutrements we’d like in the space (lights, wireless speakers, things like that).
This structure, combined with the polycarbonate siding we chose, gives us a pool space we can use all year. We can cool the building with our fan system during the summer and warm it with area heating in the winter.
We couldn’t be happier with how the project turned out. We have a pool house we can use anytime, any season, and this is something that really adds value to the investment we made for our pool space. We can’t wait to do some swimming when it’s snowing outside!
Again, thanks for all of your help with this, it took quite the effort but really turned out sensational! Thanks, Rob H.
To see more metal buildings our customers have built, and what they have to say about them, visit our testimonials page.
If you’d like to learn more, give us a call at (800) 825-0316 or download our building planning kit and get started below:
The Differences Between Open Web Truss & Rigid Frame Steel Buildings
As you sort through our wide variety of metal building options, you may become overwhelmed with the many options we offer. However, there’s no need to worry! You don’t have to get a civil engineering or structural engineering degree to successfully design and build a structure that stands up to whatever gets thrown at it, from heavy use to high wind loads and snow loads. The experts at Worldwide Steel Buildings can help you from start to finish to make sure you get exactly what you’re looking for in a steel building.
Still, most of our customers like to understand exactly what they’re buying and building. One of the most common questions we get from our customers is about the structural design types available in our building kits, and the frame elements that each is composed of. Specifically, about how to choose a truss design. What are the differences between open web truss and rigid frame steel buildings? How do you decide which roof trusses are right for which type of structure? The answer is different for each customer, but to start, you’ll want to consider the following:
- The use of the building
- Size of the project
- Location of the building
- Weather conditions
- Budget
With those items in mind, let’s take a closer look at these two primary types of truss structure (open web truss and rigid frame) available in our steel buildings to help make your decision clearer.
What Is an Open Web Truss Steel Building?
There are multiple types of truss, and Worldwide Steel Buildings primarily uses an open web steel truss. These are roof framing systems composed of hollow steel truss members which are connected by pin joints. They are plane truss systems, which means all the web members and nodes lie on a two-dimensional plane (opposed to a space truss system, which is three-dimensional).
Our open web truss frame systems are ideal for clear spans up to 225 feet, which makes them a great option for commercial applications. Further, the gambrel truss option provides the look of an agricultural building or barn. Open web truss buildings are good choices for buildings regularly occupied by customers or employees. For instance, buildings being used as:
- Retail stores
- Warehouses
- Sports facilities
- Aircraft hangars
Additionally, we have several designs of trusses and all of them allow installation of insulation, HVAC systems, sprinkler systems, sliding or overhead doors, skylight panels, and many other custom add-ons.
Our open truss building designs don’t require heavy equipment to install the trusses, but don’t be fooled by the easy assembly. This structure is developed and built to your local wind and snow building codes so that they can last through anything. They are made of 100% American steel and pre-punched and pre-welded before delivery.
What Is a Rigid Frame Steel Building?
The rigid frame structure is also made of 100% American steel. It allows for the maximum use of open space for storage and mobility due to the large distances possible between structural elements. This style of building is a good choice for:
- Warehouses
- Manufacturing space
- Churches
- Agricultural storage for large equipment
Like the open truss building, our rigid frame building is perfect for the DIY project or contractor. The pieces come pre-drilled, pre-welded, and with an easy-to-read, step-by-step instruction manual.
Both our open truss and rigid frame building systems undergo structural analysis, are incredibly durable and able to handle the internal forces and external forces that will act on your steel structure. Regardless of the style, we can design a building for your specific needs. We used MBS design software, and all of our buildings are made in an AISC-MB manufacturing facility. Everything from our raw materials to our manufacturing process is monitored by a third-party to ensure the highest level of quality control, which translates into a simple, straightforward steel building assembly process for you.
Which One Should You Choose?
If you’re still unclear which type of steel building is right for your project, the best way to get some clarity is to consult the experts at Worldwide Steel Buildings. We work with our valued customers tirelessly in order to determine exactly what they need in a steel building.
Get in front of increasing material costs by reserving your metal building today! Give our experts a call at (800) 825-0316 or contact us online and tell us about your project. You can also design your steel building online with our 3D Building Designer by clicking the image below.
8 Awesome Upgrades for the Ultimate Man Cave
Have you always wanted your own man cave, but haven’t quite been able to turn it from idea to reality? Good news: there are more ways than ever to design and build your ultimate man cave — for less time and less money than you probably have in mind.
First things first: what — and where — exactly is a man cave? It might just be your home’s basement, outfitted with a pool table or foosball table, a dart board, and some jerseys and other sports memorabilia hung on the walls. But we think that’s a little boring. Think bigger!
We’re huge proponents of a man cave that isn’t inside your home. It should feel like a mini getaway every time you’re inside. Even a detached garage or small building across the yard can give you much-needed physical and mental space from your everyday life.
Men around the country have purchased Worldwide Steel Buildings metal garage kits and turned them into some truly awesome spaces that make their friends and neighbors jealous. You can choose the size, building elements (including windows and door styles, which could make or break some of these man cave ideas) and finishes to fit what you’re looking for. Our steel frame building kits are so easy to put together, even a first-timer can do it DIY-style. From there, it all comes down to interior design. We don’t just mean which paint color you choose and where you put the recliner. We mean those inspirational elements that a man cave is built around.
We’ve got some inspiration to get you back on track! Check out these ten must-have features for the upgraded ultimate man cave.
1. The Boys Need a Bar
You’re better than a lone mini-fridge. Every man cave should come equipped with a home bar — a wet bar, more specifically. Slide in a counter, add a few comfy stools, and stock it with all the best craft beers and cocktail fixings. If you’re going to do it big, this is definitely one feature you’ll need to include!
2. High-Tech Keg
Gone are the college frat days of the aluminum keg in a trash can full of ice. Grownups have a sleek kegerator on wheels with a professional tap on top. Click here to explore all the high-tech options!
3. Upcycled Welding Bench
Maybe your man cave is less about relaxing horizontally and more about pursuing your passions. That’s awesome. Create a workshop outfitted with the tools, whether that’s woodworking or welding equipment.
Your personal workshop should be more than functional. It should make a personal statement about the kind of craftsman you are. Check this out: an airplane hobbyist channels his inner pilot with an upcycled airplane lift outfitted as a welding bench!
4. Submerged Lift
Keeping with the hobbyist theme here: You may love to restore a classic automobile from time to time, that’s not always what’s on the menu in your man cave. Install a submerged hydraulic lift and keep your floor space open in between projects. So much room for activities!
Psst – if you’re occasionally using your man cave for something as large as a vehicle, you’ll need to incorporate doors large enough to accommodate it when you’re still in the design stages.
5. The Real Deal Home Theater
Sure, you may have a huge flat screen television with the latest gaming system hooked up and streaming services, but do you have a projector that re-creates the theater experience? How about state-of-the-art surround sound? One master remote control to rule them all? The go-big-or-go-home mentality definitely applies in this situation!
6. An Elevated Game Room
Of course your home theater supports your video game hobby, in almost life-sized fashion. But for the true gamer, that’s just the beginning. Want this space to turn into the go-to hangout zone for your friends and neighbors? Hunt down some vintage arcade games and watch everyone get re-addicted to the classics you grew up with.
In the mood for something a little more physical? Make some room to move while you’re wearing a VR headset, or invest in a golf simulator and perfect your swing from your own man cave.
7. Personal Climbing Wall
Why stop at a weight bench and a treadmill? When you’re designing your own building to spec for everything your man cave needs, the sky’s the limit. If you’ve got a larger-than-life space that needs filling, get your own indoor climbing wall! Skip the bench press and go vertical.
8. Secure the Goods
Upgrade entry security to “Fort Knox” level with an entry door facade that imitates a bank vault. If that’s too over the top for your taste, at least lock up your space with a remote locking system. That way you can play gatekeeper from anywhere! And make sure to add a wifi-enabled security camera for the high-tech gadgets and equipment that will doubtless fill your man cave.
Ready to learn more about what goes into crafting your perfect man cave, or get started on designing and building your man cave? Contact the experts at Worldwide Steel at (800) 825-0316 for more information on how we can make your man cave a reality with our steel building kits!
