Service area · Bingham County
Shelley carries 35 psf while Idaho Falls carries 23 — from ground that is nearly a hundred feet lower. It is the clearest local proof that elevation does not set the number by itself.
Mon–Fri 8am–5pm · Idaho Falls and the surrounding towns
Send the address and the size you have in mind. You’ll get the design load your jurisdiction requires and the office that permits it.
Shelley sits at 4,629 feet, about seven miles south of the Idaho Falls airport station, and carries 35 psf in the 2015 University of Idaho ground snow load study. Idaho Falls, at 4,725 feet, carries 23.
So the lower town carries twelve more pounds per square foot. That is not an error in the study. Ground snow load is derived from measured snow depth and water-equivalent records at and around each station, and local terrain, exposure and storm track all feed into it. Elevation is one input among several.
The practical consequence is simple and it costs money: never accept a truss quote that was priced off a neighboring town’s number. Ask which figure the design used and which jurisdiction adopted it.
Inside city limits, permits go to the City of Shelley Building & Safety Department — not to Bingham County. That is the opposite of the arrangement in Rigby a few miles north, where the county issues for the city.
Step outside the city limits and you are on unincorporated Bingham County criteria instead. The county does not publish a single fixed snow load for those parcels; it publishes a formula:
ground snow load = (elevation ÷ 100) − 5
That wording is Bingham County Code Title 8, §8-1-2-1: “elevation in feet above mean sea level divided by 100, minus 5 equals the ground snow load.” Shelley at 4,629 feet: 4,629 ÷ 100 = 46.29, minus 5 = 41 psf, where the 2015 study calculated 35 psf. The adopted number is the higher one, and the adopted number is the one your permit is judged against.
Run your own parcel elevation through it before you accept anyone’s truss package, then confirm the result with the county.
Confirm current requirements and fees with the department before ordering material.
Shelley is a city of 4,785 in Bingham County — Idaho’s number one county for both vegetables and potatoes at $230.6 million and grains and oilseeds at $146.5 million.
The county runs 1,081 farms on 897,796 acres, with 330,319 acres irrigated. And 59% of those farms are under 50 acres, which is the profile that fills a shop rather than a commercial storage barn.
What that means for how the building gets specified:
Cost ranges for these builds are published in one place rather than repeated here. See what a shop costs in this market →
Post-frame shops from 24x32 up, sized around door height, truss spacing and the snow load your jurisdiction adopts.
Hay, livestock and implement structures, where the permit path differs from a residential accessory building.
Send the parcel address and the footprint you want. You'll get the department with jurisdiction, whether you are inside city limits, and the ground snow load that applies there.