Under certain circs they are exempt, but not from public liability. If it falls on someone it's your neck. If you build it to regs you have a good defence.
Not quite sure what to make of this statement. If Building Regs don't apply; they don't apply end of story. Most peoples' houses here don't comply with current Building Regs and they seem quite happy to live in them despite the fact that timbers may be well under spec to current regs.; so I'm not exactly too concerned about my own barn, in my own field miles from my nearest neighbour!
The reason for the post was to show people a diary of construction. In particular building a useful barn that will be fairly inexpensive and that doesn't look like something from a third world refugee camp. In the blog I have stated that there are a few things I'm making up as I go along.
As for construction (I'm fairly knowledgeable about things) the project is 'belt and braces' construction. In the main fairly over engineered.
As I look around the countryside I see all sorts of shambolic constructions from traditional pole barns with sagging roofs to the horsey encampments that seem to spring up in some areas. Most of these now look like refugee camps, with pallets everywhere, visqueen hay stores, old baths and sinks strewn everywhere, and ramshackle huts and old lorry bodies as stables and electric fence tape tied everywhere.
I'm building on concrete foundations that go down in places to nearly 2m and will be using substantial timbers for columns etc.. and all people can do is mutter about Building Regulations and public liability. I suggest that perhaps those people may wish to get a structural engineer in to calculate that every aspect of their life is meeting earthquake proof standards; has everyone calculated the wind loading on their garden fence to obviate risk to passing pedestrians?
Have you seen what some of the timber stables and field shelters being sold on the internet are made of (not much more than matchwood in some cases)? Most of these are just plonked at best on a 4-6" concrete slab (not 2m deep foundations with nearly a meter square footprint at the bottom!) and at worst just put on bare soil or paving slabs.
So if anyone is interested in seeing progress I'll add to the blog as we go along. If anyone has useful suggestions I'm happy to receive them but please don't start bleating on about public liability, elf and safety and 'what if we have a a once in 500 year weather event' as this type of negativity really bugs the hell out of me.
That said, it had probably been standing for 30 years, and it was a relatively easy job to jack up the roof and replace the poles with new ones when we did it this summer.
In 30 years I'll probably be dead but if I have to arrange to replace a couple of timber columns so be it!