Buying a new steel building is exciting, especially with a tool like the Easy Building Designer. You or your customer can create a visual image of what the final product will look like: laying out the dimensions, selecting the colors, customizing features, and adding windows and doors.

If, however, this is your first time purchasing a steel building, you might want to pump the brakes a bit and ask a few extra questions. Here are a few things steel building customers say they wish they’d done differently after making their first purchase.

• Go a little bigger. Given the cost of erecting a steel building, many potential customers design buildings for right now. They think of the requirements for the present moment without giving thought to how those needs might change. Few people need less space as time goes on. They want more room for hobbies, for storage, or for their growing business. Add a few feet to the width and length. Add that lean-to. You may not need it right now, but you will.
• Check that door height. Those eight foot roll up doors looked perfect on the model, but you had clearance to go to ten feet, twelve feet, or even higher. You can make do with eight feet, but a taller door would have been much more useful. It’s a modification you can make on most buildings, for a price, but it saves you time and money to do it right the first time.
• Think about Insulation. Insulation can be beneficial for more than just keeping a building cool in the summer and warm in the winter. Many people like the sound of rain pinging off a metal building, but there’s a limit to everything. Consider adding insulation, and explore the options available to you, especially if you will be doing the install. Some insulation products are easier for do-it-yourselfers than others.
• Add that extra window or door. A gentleman on YouTube erected a garage that faces East. He has two roll up doors on the eastern wall and a few windows on each side. Guess where he forgot to add one? On the West side, where the sun sets. If you think you need one more, add one more. Same goes for doors. Easier to do it the first time than to go back and add later.
• Plan for utilities. As with doors and windows, it’s ultimately cheaper and easier to add utilities to a steel building when it goes up versus retrofitting the building later. Again, consider the needs you may have in a year, five years, or ten years versus what you need right now. Plan ahead. Spend a few extra bucks now to save a few dollars more later.

Steel building owners online have expressed many regrets with their buildings. They wish they’d put it in a different place. They wish they’d gone with a different interior. They wish they poured the slab differently. They wish they’d used different trim along the floors and around the doors. They wish they’d put two sinks in the master bathroom instead of one. 

There’s one thing you never hear from steel building owners: “I wish I’d built with something other than steel.” Steel buildings have a strength and an aesthetic other buildings cannot match, and every steel building is environmentally friendly made from 100% recyclable materials. Easy Building Designer makes designing with steel easy. Asking a few extra questions will make that building the best it can be.