Hell or High Water
Stay cool with steel - no matter what the weather is!
Despite the long history of wooden buildings being used for agriculture and mining, structural steel has become a competitive building material in these fields. This is because steel offers a number of weather-related advantages that put it at the head of the pack!
Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires
Wood is understandably weak to fire – which is great for campfires and roasting smores – but maybe not for your next big mining truck stop. While the average fire burns at about 800°C, steel has a melting point of 1,200°C, making metal shop buildings a fantastic alternative when thinking about fire safety.
Build Me an Ark!
Water isn’t particularly friendly to wooden buildings either. With the potential for wood movement, flooding, mould, or rot, steel is a superior option. Especially when considering some of the dramatically cold winters we get in Canada – you want to keep your farmyard animals warm and dry in a steel barn when all that snow starts to melt.
Now you might be thinking steel has a weakness to water when it comes to rust. However, it’s not a problem with the anti-corrosion coatings we use on pre-engineered steel panels. Problem solved!
Earthquakes, Hurricanes, and Lightning, Oh My!
Wherever you’re located, there’s bound to be some sort of extreme weather threatening to upend all your hard work and shut down work for a day. But steel and metal buildings have been shown to be the most resistant to extreme weather damage. They’re resilient in earthquakes for having low height and lightweight, stand up to hurricanes with the strongest strength-to-weight building material ratio, and combat lightning strikes by allowing electrical charges to effectively disperse into the ground.
All of these weather advantages are great for lots of buildings, but we particularly recommend our prefab steel buildings for our agriculture and mining customers, who often have to deal with a lot of intense weather on top of all their other needs.
What to learn more about how steel and metal buildings combat the elements? Check out our article: Ready for the Seasons: How Metal Buildings Can Adapt to the Climate.
Metal Structure Concepts has been designing and constructing steel buildings across Canada for over 20 years. From retail spaces to warehouses to wineries (and more), we are the experts for your next project. Contact us today to get a free quote.