A flatbed truck delivering banded steel frame members and stacked metal roof panels to a building site beside a finished concrete slab.

Barndominium Kits Colorado: Steel & Pole Barn Shell Kits

Our barndominium kits in Colorado are the structural shell: primary frame, secondary framing, roof and wall panels, fasteners, trim and the drawing set that goes with them, delivered to your land. The part a catalogue kit gets wrong in Colorado is the roof. There is no statewide residential building code, so the snow load, wind speed and frost depth come from the county or city over your parcel, and in the mountain counties the snow load climbs with elevation. We get that figure for your land first and quote the kit against it.

Stamped drawings where your jurisdiction requires them
Drawn to your jurisdiction's snow, wind and frost values
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Barndominium Kits: how the work runs

Four stages, in this order. The sequence matters more than it looks: getting the design values, the water and septic answers and any permits settled before anything is fabricated is what keeps a Colorado build from stalling.

1

Size, layout and the basement question

We start from footprint, eave height, door and window openings, and how much of the building is living space versus shop. That split drives the frame more than square footage does. In Colorado there is a second early decision: slab, crawl space or basement. A basement under a kit changes the foundation, the column bases and the stair, and on the Front Range's swelling clays it is a soils question before it is a floor-plan question, so it is settled before anything is priced.

2

Your jurisdiction's snow, wind and frost figures

Before a frame is sized we get the criteria your jurisdiction publishes. They vary more than buyers expect. Mesa County prints a 30 lb ground snow load around Grand Junction and 100 lb at Mesa Lakes. Jefferson County keys its table to elevation, reaching 70 psf at 7,875 feet. Elbert County prints 35 psf, 115 mph and a 36-inch frost line; Larimer County sets 30 inches of frost depth countywide and wind speeds from 115 to 225 mph depending on the site.

3

Fabrication and delivery

The frame is fabricated and delivered on a date you confirm. We stage delivery so the foundation has cured and the site can take a loaded truck, which on rural acreage usually means the driveway and a firm staging pad go in first. On a mountain lot that also means checking the approach: grade, switchbacks and whether a long trailer can physically reach the pad.

4

Erection support, and who checks the work

You get erection drawings, the anchor bolt layout and phone support, and erection can be quoted as an add-on if you would rather not stand steel or set posts yourself. Where a city, county or regional building department has jurisdiction, it inspects. Where the county has adopted no building code, nobody schedules a structural inspection for you, and it is worth arranging an independent look at the frame and connections before liner panels cover them.

A red oxide primed structural steel frame partly erected on a concrete slab, showing bolted knee joints and anchor bolts.
What the box does not know

The snow on your roof is set by your elevation, not by the state line

Colorado has no statewide residential building code. Counties may adopt one for unincorporated land and cities and towns adopt their own, so the design figures on your drawings come from whoever has jurisdiction over your parcel. In the high country those figures move with altitude: Jefferson County's snow-load table climbs from the low 40s psf at its lowest elevations to 143 psf at 10,000 feet, and requires design by a registered design professional above 70 psf. Ask any kit vendor which jurisdiction's figures their package was drawn to. If the answer is "Colorado", the work has not been done for your land.

Where we deliver barndominium kits

In Colorado the lines that matter are city limits, county lines and contour lines. Inside a city or town you have its zoning and its building department; out in the county, some counties enforce a building code and some rural ones do not; and in the mountain counties the snow load climbs with elevation, so two parcels in the same county can be drawn to very different roofs. Cross one of those lines and what changes is whether the build is inspected, who reviews the drawings and whose snow, wind and frost values they answer to. The septic permit from the local public health agency and the well permit from the Division of Water Resources go with you almost everywhere.

Barndominium builders across Colorado.

Every city and county we build in has its own answer on permits, septic, water and design values. The service area pages set out what each one publishes.

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Before you commit

What actually decides the price

Square footage is the number everyone leads with, and it is rarely the one that moves a barndominium budget. These four do.

  • Ground snow load at your elevation

    This is the Colorado number that moves a kit most. Mesa County prints 30 lb around Grand Junction, 70 lb in the Vega area and 90 lb at Powderhorn. Larimer County allows the prescriptive residential code only where the ground snow load does not exceed 70 psf and the wind speed is under 140 mph; past those limits the frame is designed to the building code and its load standards instead, and the steel or lumber goes up with it.

  • Clear span width

    The distance between columns moves frame weight faster than length does. Going from 40 to 60 feet of clear span costs more than adding 20 feet of length, because every pound of roof snow on a wide span travels to two column lines with no interior bearing wall to shorten the path. Wide spans under a heavy mountain snow load are where a kit stops being a catalogue item and becomes a design a Colorado-licensed professional engineer stamps.

  • The foundation the kit sits on

    The kit price does not include the concrete, and in Colorado the concrete is often the bigger question. The Colorado Geological Survey calls expansive or swelling soil the state's most significant geologic hazard, and on those clays a soils report can call for drilled piers, a structural floor or over-excavation instead of a plain slab. On the Western Slope the survey flags the opposite problem too: soils that collapse when they get wet.

  • The envelope, which no kit solves

    A shell is not a house. Insulation, air sealing, windows, doors and everything inside are separate work, priced separately. Where your county or city has a building code, Colorado law requires it to carry an energy code too, and Elbert County's design table puts the county in climate zone 5. In a girt-wall kit there are no stud bays to fill, so the insulated assembly has to be designed rather than assumed.

A flatbed truck delivering banded steel frame members and stacked metal roof panels to a building site beside a finished concrete slab.

Barndominium Kits in Colorado: common questions

8 questions we get asked most often about building in Colorado. If yours is not on the list, ask it directly.

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What is in a barndominium kit, and what do I still have to buy?
The kit is the structure and the skin: frame, secondary framing, roof and wall panels, fasteners, trim, closures and drawings. It is not the foundation or basement, the windows and entry doors, the insulation, the interior, the well, the septic system or any of the site work. On rural Colorado land the well and septic are often the largest items outside the kit, and neither can be priced until the parcel has been looked at.
Can a kit be built anywhere in Colorado?
A kit can be drawn for almost anywhere, but it has to be drawn for somewhere. Colorado leaves design figures to local government, and they range widely: Mesa County prints 30 lb of ground snow around Grand Junction and 100 lb at Mesa Lakes, and Jefferson County's table climbs past 140 psf above 10,000 feet. A kit that is fine on the Eastern Plains can be undersized in the foothills. We draw to your parcel's figures, not to an average.
Steel kit or post-frame kit — which suits Colorado?
Both are built here. A steel frame spans wider without interior columns and does not care about ground moisture at the column base, which matters on expansive clay. A post-frame kit is usually lighter on the budget and quicker to stand, and it is the vocabulary many rural buyers use — pole barn home, post frame home. The choice usually turns on the span you want, the snow load at your elevation and what your soils report says about the foundation.
Do I need a building permit for a barndominium kit?
That depends on where the land is. Inside a city or town, and in counties that have adopted a building code, yes. Colorado counties are authorized to adopt a building code rather than required to, and some rural counties have none, which means no county building permit for the shell. Septic permits from the local public health agency and state or local electrical and plumbing permits still apply. We confirm which of those applies before the kit is ordered.
Will the kit need a Colorado engineer's stamp?
Often, yes. Many Colorado building departments want sealed structural drawings for a steel or post-frame building, and some make it automatic past a snow-load line — Jefferson County requires design by a registered design professional where the ground snow load exceeds 70 psf. Where the drawings need a seal, a Colorado-licensed professional engineer provides it. We coordinate that and tell you up front whether your jurisdiction will ask for one.
Can a kit go on a basement?
Yes. A basement is common in Colorado housing and a kit can sit on one, but it changes the foundation design, the column or post bases and the stair location, so it has to be decided before the frame is drawn. On expansive clay the Colorado Geological Survey warns that building without allowance for basement floor movement is a common source of damage, so the soils report decides how that floor is built.
How long does a kit take to arrive?
Fabrication and delivery run on the manufacturer's schedule and move with the season and the order book, so we give you a date when the kit is ordered rather than a promise in advance. The more useful point is the sequence: the permit, the well permit and the foundation usually take longer than the kit, and the Division of Water Resources says its review of a complete well-permit application may take up to 49 days.
What does it take to get a price on a kit?
A location, a footprint and a rough idea of how much of the building is living space. From the location we find the snow load, wind speed and frost depth your jurisdiction publishes, and those drive the frame. Start the survey with those three things and we will come back with who has jurisdiction over your land and what the kit has to be drawn to.

Keep reading

The pages that answer the next question this one raises.

Barndominium Laws in Colorado

No statewide residential code, and why the numbers on your drawings change at a county line and with elevation.

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Barndominium Cost Guide

What the shell is as a share of finished cost, so the kit price is read correctly.

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Custom Plans

What you need drawn before a kit can be quoted properly.

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Kits vs Modular & Prefab Homes

How a kit built on site differs from a modular or manufactured home in approval, snow load and financing.

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Ready to put barndominium kits against a real plan? Start there and the rest follows.

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Tell us about the land

Tell us where the parcel is and what you want on it, and we will come back with who has jurisdiction, what the land needs before it can be built on, and a realistic budget range. Starting the survey costs nothing.

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