Building types · Eastern Idaho
A barndominium is a residence in a post-frame shell. That one fact decides the permit path, the code you build to, and whether the ag exemption is available at all. It is not.
Mon–Fri 8am–5pm · Idaho Falls and the surrounding towns
Say whether living space is in the plan, now or in five years. That single answer sets the permit path.
This is the single thing worth being honest about before anything else on this page. The moment you intend habitation, the agricultural exemption is off the table. Idaho Code §39-4105 and Bonneville County Code §156.040 both bar human habitation in an exempt farm building. There is no version of the exemption that quietly allows a living space inside.
A shop you later want to live in requires a conversion permit, full compliance with the building code in force at the time of conversion, and an occupancy permit before the space is occupied. That is a retrofit of a finished building, not a filing.
Design for the residential path from the start, or accept the retrofit. Both are legitimate choices. Only one of them is cheap, and it is the one made before the columns go in the ground.
None of this is exotic construction. It is ordinary residential work that becomes expensive only when it is added to a building that was never laid out for it.
Published ranges and completed-project medians. Everything listed below the rule is bought on top of the shell, never inside it.
A shell is a weather-tight frame: columns, trusses, steel, and the openings. It is a real milestone and a real deliverable, and it is a long way from a residence.
The medians above come from Steel Structures America’s completed projects and describe finished shop-grade buildings. A residence adds the interior trades on top: heat, plumbing, electrical service, finishes and the utility runs that reach the parcel in the first place.
Get every one of those scoped in writing before comparing two bids. The reason barndominium quotes in this market look wildly inconsistent is that they are usually describing different amounts of building. How the cost stacks up →
Search “barndominium builder Idaho Falls” and the results are almost entirely out-of-area: national kit sellers, Texas and Midwest builders, and directory pages that list nobody here.
That matters because the parts of this build type that cost money are entirely local — the county with jurisdiction, the ground snow load in force, the frost depth, the depth to basalt under your parcel. National content cannot answer any of it, and it is where the budget is decided.
Hay, livestock and implement structures, where the permit path differs from a residential accessory building.
Slab, footings to 30 inches, gravel, drainage and access — the line item that moves most on loess over basalt.
Living quarters now, later, or never — say which, along with the parcel address. That answer, more than anything else on the drawing, determines what the county will require of the shell.