Farming Monthly National January 2015 | Page 52

| Buildings RIDBA helps reduce the cost of agri buildings The potential for the cost of erecting agricultural buildings to rise due to European legislation has been minimised by RIDBA, the Rural and Industrial Design and Building Association. IDBA has for some time now been working on revising Eurocodecompliant load tables for steel portal frames for use in Class 2 Agricultural Buildings. These are now complete and will help steel frame manufacturer corporate members of RIDBA to reduce their costs in fabricating agricultural buildings as they may not need to employ a structural engineer to design every one. R A full list of accredited CE Marked steel frame manufacturer RIDBA members covering the whole of the UK is available on the RIDBA website The revised load tables in accordance with BS 5502-22:2003 + A1:2013, “Buildings and structures for agriculture — Part 22: Code of practice for design, construction and loading” have been expanded to provide more efficient designs for a greater range of portal frame steel buildings. They now cover four load situations, ranging from the worst case for Class 2 agricultural buildings of Snow Load 4 at 200m to a low loading of Snow Loading 2 at 100m. They also cover two intermediate loadings at Snow Load 3 at 100m one with 24m/s basic wind speed and the other with 22m/s basic wind speed. This large range of loadings means that a high proportion of agricultural buildings from Lands End to John O-Groats can be more efficiently designed. The revised load tables do not just provide the steel sizes but also details of wall and roof bracing, eaves struts, connections, base plates, haunches, subgrade information and revised timber purlins, rails and eaves beams information. Accepted for the purp