Building types · Idaho Falls, ID
A shop is priced by three decisions made before anyone breaks ground: how wide the clear span is, how tall the sidewall runs, and how deep the columns have to go.
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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.
Steel Structures America medians from completed projects. Trusst Buildings of Shelley publishes $30 to $60 per square foot for its own work, which brackets a 2,400 sq ft building at $72,000 to $144,000.
Those are medians for finished buildings, not for material packages. A post-frame kit for the same footprint is a much smaller number, and comparing the two is the most common way a shop budget goes wrong in this market.
Prices on this page are published market figures, not a quote. What your parcel adds or subtracts depends on the ground, the access and the design snow load your jurisdiction adopts.
A post-frame building carries its load on laminated columns rather than on a continuous foundation wall. Columns are set on poured footings or on brackets anchored to concrete, spaced at 8 to 12 foot centers along the sidewall.
Trusses land on top of those columns and span the full width with nothing underneath. Horizontal girts on the walls and purlins on the roof tie the frame together and give the steel skin something to fasten to. The steel is the weather barrier, not the structure.
The consequence for a shop is clear span. A 40-foot-wide post-frame shop has 40 feet of usable floor with no interior post to route a vehicle, a hoist or a workbench around. Stick-frame and masonry at the same width usually need either an interior bearing line or much deeper engineered beams.
That is also why widening a building costs more per foot than lengthening it. Adding 20 feet of length repeats a truss you already engineered. Adding 10 feet of width redesigns every truss on the building.
These are two different numbers and swapping them is the most expensive small mistake on a shop plan. The door opening is the clear height you drive through. The sidewall is the height of the column from the slab to the truss bearing.
A sectional overhead door needs headroom above the opening for the torsion tube, tracks and opener. Standard lift hardware typically wants about 15 to 18 inches; low- and high-lift track packages change that figure. If the sidewall is set equal to the door height, the door does not fit.
What usually drives the height decision on a shop in this market:
Every added foot of sidewall raises column length, wall steel, insulation area and wind load on the frame. It is cheap to decide early and costly to change after the trusses are engineered.
The bottom of the footing has to sit at or below 30 inches in this area. Above that depth the soil freezes and heaves, and a column bearing on frost-susceptible ground will lift and drop with the season until the frame racks.
On the eastern Snake River Plain that requirement collides with the ground itself. The USDA description for Polatis silt loam lists depth to bedrock at 20 to 40 inches — meaning basalt can sit above the depth your footing is required to reach. That does not stop the building; it changes the excavation and sometimes the foundation type. See concrete and site prep for what that adds.
Clear height drives the price: a 14 ft door needs roughly 16 ft of sidewall, and that changes post and truss spec.
Slab, footings to 30 inches, gravel, drainage and access — the line item that moves most on loess over basalt.
Send the parcel address, the width you want clear, and the tallest thing going through the door. You'll get the design snow load, the permit office that covers you, and what the ground is likely to add.