80x120 Farm Equipment Shed

This page is ordered around height and clearance, because at 80x120 the 22-foot eave limits a equipment shed sooner than the plan does.

The footprint holds 25 shelter bays — 5 across by 5 deep — and the remaining 0 feet is marginal: there is no closed end, so small valuable items travel back to the house or the workshop every evening.

Commitment first: 94% of the 9,600 square feet goes to shelter bays at 360 square feet each, and 600 square feet survives as edge strip. A footprint is worth its own decision when that split lands where the work does. Plan the exit as carefully as the entrance; buildings are emptied under more time pressure than they are filled.

An equipment shed is a light shelter rather than an enclosure: it is planned around getting a machine under a roof and back out again with nothing in the way. It is reached frequent and unplanned during a working season, often without dismounting to open a door. A 80 by 120 footprint is a clearly directional plan: 9,600 sq ft enclosed by 400 ft of wall, at a 1.5:1 length-to-width proportion. Along its 120 ft dimension it takes 5 runs of shelter bays at 24 ft, leaving 0 ft over — the 0 ft is where the argument about this size actually happens. Taken purely as arithmetic, 80 by 120 gives 5 shelter bays across the 80 ft dimension once 0 ft is reserved for movement, and 5 deep along the 120 ft dimension. Run as a an open shelter with a small closed lock-up at one end, 5 ft across is below the 16 ft this use needs to be worth planning, so there is no closed end, so small valuable items travel back to the house or the workshop every evening Rain driven at an angle reaches further under a roof than the plan view suggests.

This footprint is planned as an open shelter with a small closed lock-up at one end. Two different rhythms share one building: machines in and out without stopping, and occasional trips to the closed end on foot. Keeping the pedestrian route out of the bay fronts is a small planning point that pays daily. An open side is a design decision about weather direction, not an omission. As for people, brief visits only, usually one operator collecting or returning a machine.

Span drives headroom at 80x120: 80 feet of width on a 4:12 pitch puts 35.3 feet over the middle and 22 feet at the walls, so where a tall item stands matters as much as how tall it is. Depth is bought cheaply and width expensively, which is why this proportion tends to be argued about before anything else.

The open bays set the eave and the lock-up inherits it, which usually leaves the closed end taller than it needs to be. That spare height is useful for racking rather than being a waste.

Ventilation across 9,600 square feet at this height: an open-sided structure is naturally ventilated, which is part of why it suits machinery that arrives wet or hot.

Turnover here is seasonal and weather-driven: heavy use for weeks, then long quiet spells. The shelter arrangement this footprint could equally be run as is an open-front shelter where machines back in and drive straight out: there is no sheltered end bay, so everything under the roof is equally exposed to whatever the open side lets in. The split is deliberately uneven — most of the length stays open, and the closed end takes only what genuinely needs a door. Letting the closed end grow is the failure mode, because each foot of it removes an open bay and adds a door to open.

The 0-foot leftover depth falls under the 16 feet this platform treats as usable for a equipment shed, so there is no closed end, so small valuable items travel back to the house or the workshop every evening. Interior divisions are the last decision that should be fixed, because they are the first one that usually changes.

The 5 feet of spare width runs the whole 120-foot length — 600 square feet of wall strip. It earns its keep as shelving, staging or a walking route, not as another shelter bay. Utilities entering on the wrong elevation quietly rewrite the interior layout.

Two different rhythms share one building: machines in and out without stopping, and occasional trips to the closed end on foot. Keeping the pedestrian route out of the bay fronts is a small planning point that pays daily. An open side is a design decision about weather direction, not an omission. As for people, brief visits only, usually one operator collecting or returning a machine. That movement pattern, not the 9,600-square-foot total, is what decides whether the leftover 0 feet is useful here.

The 80-foot gable can carry 5 openings, one per shelter bay, with 5 feet of wall left for piers between and beside them — the arrangement that keeps each position independently reachable. Height is the dimension people regret; it cannot be added later without rebuilding the frame line.

The 80 ft ends and the 120 ft sides offer very different opening budgets: 80 ft of end wall has room for one wide opening or two modest ones, while 120 ft of side wall can carry several without the openings competing. On this plan the deciding factor is whether shelter with secure store or lock-up sizing should be the first thing reached from the door.

Nominal bay division computes to 5 bays at about 24 feet, wider than the 15-foot module — so a position can sit inside a bay without a frame line splitting it. Insulating later is possible; framing for insulation later is much harder.

Two-plus rows change the access question entirely. Every rear position at 80x120 needs either its own opening or an aisle, and 5 feet of spare width is what that aisle has to come from. Long spans buy flexibility that is only worth paying for if the operation actually changes shape.

Open bays extend easily; the lock-up does not, because it is bounded by a wall on one side and bays on the other. If the closed space is likely to grow, place it at the end of the run that has ground beyond it.

Configured as an open shelter with a small closed lock-up at one end, 80x120 is judged on whether the 25 shelter bays it holds match the operation, and on whether the 5 feet of spare width leaves the route this mode depends on.

• Does the work need racking or work zones on both sides with a full vehicle lane down the middle, or does it need a second lane that this 80-foot span cannot give?
• Is the 120-foot length being bought for depth, or for the repeated bays — a long repeating bay sequence, so segment boundaries are set by bay lines rather than by walls?
• Which side needs to stay open, and which side faces the weather?
• Does the bay width suit the widest implement, folded or unfolded?

• 50x80 moves the count from 25 to 9 shelter bays (3 across by 3 deep), which is the reason to choose between them.
• 40x100 moves the count from 25 to 8 shelter bays (2 across by 4 deep), which is the reason to choose between them.
• 60x80 moves the count from 25 to 16 shelter bays (4 across by 4 deep), which is the reason to choose between them.

Because this footprint is planned as an open shelter with a small closed lock-up at one end, the useful next reads are different from the ones a differently shaped equipment shed suggests: shelter with secure store, lock-up sizing, pedestrian access to shelters.

Quantities, not prices, are publishable here: roof cladding runs 10,119 square feet — 5% above the 9,600-square-foot floor at a 4:12 pitch — with 177.8 cubic yards of nominal slab beneath it. A wider bay is a structural decision and a longer bay is a layout decision; the two are often confused.

Proportion drives cost here as much as size does: 400 ft of wall around 9,600 sq ft is 0.042 ft of wall per enclosed square foot, and a squarer plan of the same area would carry less. What moves the figure further on a an open shelter with a small closed lock-up at one end is the fit-out shelter with secure store implies, along with framed openings and the height chosen for the 80 ft span.

• how many sides are enclosed
• bay width set by the widest implement
• drive-in height across the open face
• the surface machinery drives on at the bay line