Picture a hypothetical pasture lot outside Bertram. The slab went in two weeks ago, flat and clean. A trailer brings the steel for a 40 by 60 shop. The crew stands the first column, and the base plate holes sit an inch and a half off the anchor bolts. Nobody did anything reckless. The slab crew set the bolts from a drawing that was two revisions old, and nobody from the steel side walked the forms before the pour. This is the most common way a steel building goes sideways. So the first thing to ask any steel building contractor Central Texas landowners call is simple: who owns the anchor bolt plan, and who checks it before the concrete goes in?
This guide covers a steel building, barndominium frame, carport or metal shop in the order the work actually happens. It also points out where jobs lose weeks and which questions keep that from happening to you.
What does a steel building contractor in Central Texas actually do?
The title covers three very different businesses. It helps to know which one you are talking to.
- Kit supplier. A manufacturer ships a pre-engineered metal building package: columns, rafters, purlins, girts, panels and trim, with a bag of bolts. You find an erector and a slab contractor, and you coordinate them yourself.
- Erector only. A crew assembles steel that someone else designed and fabricated. When a hole is off, the fix goes back to the supplier, and your job waits.
- Fabricate and erect. The shop cuts, drills and welds the members in its own bay, then loads out and installs with its own crew. A mobile welding rig handles field fixes on site the same day.
None of these is wrong. What changes is who answers the phone when something does not fit. A fabricate-and-erect shop owns the drawings, the steel and the install, so there is one place to call when the anchor bolts, the base plates and the framed openings have to line up. With a kit on a remote Hill Country tract, a single short member can mean a long wait for freight.
Planning something like this? Send the shop your drawings for a written quote.
Which comes first: the slab, the permit or the steel building drawings?
Most landowners want to pour the slab first because it feels like progress. That is backwards. The slab is designed around the column loads (reactions) and the bolt layout, and those come from the steel drawings. The working order looks like this:
- Site walk. Check trailer and lift access, drainage, setbacks, easements, utility lines and any floodplain. Low water crossings and soft caliche roads decide whether a loaded trailer can reach the pad after a rain.
- Jurisdiction check. Find out whether the land is inside a city limit, in an ETJ or in unincorporated county. More on this below.
- Frame design. Settle the size, eave height, clear span, bay spacing, door and window openings, porches, and any mezzanine or crane loads. The frame is designed to the site's wind and snow loads.
- Anchor bolt plan. The steel side hands the slab side a dimensioned plan: bolt diameter, projection, embedment, and column reactions.
- Slab. Form it, rough in plumbing for a barndominium, set the bolts in templates, check them, pour, and let the concrete cure.
- Frame erection. Stand the columns and rafters, then plumb, square and brace.
- Secondary framing and sheeting. Install purlins, girts, panels, trim, doors and gutters.
- Finish-out. Insulation, interior walls, electrical and HVAC, especially for a barndominium.
How do permits generally work for a steel building in Williamson, Travis and Burnet counties?
This depends on where the tract sits, and it changes often in fast-growing areas. As a general picture:
- Inside city limits (Liberty Hill, Leander, Georgetown, Cedar Park, Marble Falls, Burnet, Austin): the city building department reviews plans and inspects under its adopted building codes. Plan on stamped structural drawings.
- Unincorporated county land: Texas counties generally cannot adopt a full building code. County development services usually handles floodplain development permits, driveway and culvert permits, addressing, and septic systems through the on-site sewage facility (OSSF) program. State law in Local Government Code Chapter 233 sets some standards for new residential construction in unincorporated areas, which can affect a barndominium.
- ETJ land: cities can apply subdivision rules in their extraterritorial jurisdiction. Texas Senate Bill 2038, passed in 2023, created a way for some landowners to petition out of an ETJ.
- Commercial and public-use buildings: the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation (TDLR) enforces the Texas Accessibility Standards, which can apply to a commercial steel building.
- Deed restrictions and HOAs often control metal siding, colors and outbuilding size, whatever the county allows.
The ground keeps shifting because the area keeps filling in. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Williamson County counted 609,017 residents in the 2020 census, up from 422,679 in 2010. Land that was open pasture ten years ago may now sit inside a city limit, next to a new subdivision or under fresh restrictions. Call your county development services office and the nearest city building department before you order steel, and have a licensed engineer confirm what the drawings must show. Nothing here is a legal or engineering determination for your site.
How much wind and hail does a Central Texas steel building need to handle?
Steel buildings in this region are designed for wind first. Hail comes second, and heat quietly works on everything else.
Wind: the load that sizes the frame
Design wind loads come from ASCE 7, the national standard for minimum design loads. The engineer works from a design wind speed for the site's location and risk category, then adjusts for conditions that landowners often miss:
- Exposure. Open ranch land with nothing upwind is usually Exposure C. A lot surrounded by cedar and oak in a subdivision may be Exposure B. The same building on open pasture sees higher design pressure.
- Topography. ASCE 7 applies a topographic factor on hills, ridges and escarpments. A shop on a Hill Country bluff above the Colorado or the San Gabriel can see a real increase in wind load over the same shop in a valley.
- Enclosure. A shop with a big overhead door that might be open during a storm may need to be designed as partially enclosed. Wind that gets inside pushes up on the roof from below. Open-sided carports and covered structures behave differently again. Their uplift and bracing are the whole design.
You can look up the mapped wind speed for any address with the ASCE Hazard Tool. That number is only a starting point. The engineer of record picks the risk category, exposure and enclosure, and those choices change the frame.
Hail and heat: panels, coatings and fasteners
Central Texas hail dents thin panels. 29 gauge is common on lighter kit buildings. 26 gauge is a more common working choice for shops and barndominiums, and 24 gauge is stiffer still. Ask whether the roof system carries a UL 2218 impact rating and what your insurer wants to see. For coating, Galvalume or a painted Galvalume substrate is the usual base. Summer heat moves metal every day, so through-fastened panels need the right screws with sealing washers, set at the right torque. Over-driven screws crush the washer, and a leak shows up the next spring. On a barndominium or a climate-controlled shop, plan insulation and a vapor retarder from the start. Condensation under a bare steel roof will drip on whatever is parked below it.
Red iron, tube steel or pipe: which steel building frame fits the job?
- Red iron rigid frame. Built-up tapered I-sections or hot-rolled W-shapes, shipped in red oxide primer. This is the choice for clear spans wide enough to swing a tractor or park a trailer: equipment barns, shops and barndominium shells. It bolts together with moment connections at the knees and ridge.
- Tube steel. Square and rectangular tube, welded. Tube steel suits carports, covered patios, smaller shops and covered structures where the steel stays in view and a clean line matters. It spans less than a rigid frame, so it takes more columns.
- Pipe frame. Schedule 40 pipe or used drill pipe. It is the traditional ranch choice for hay barns, loafing sheds and covers that match existing pipe fence. It holds up well and is easy to repair with a rig in the field.
Pay attention to the finish on any frame. Primer is not a finish coat. Red oxide on interior columns is fine under a roof. Exposed exterior steel in Central Texas sun and humidity needs paint over primer, or hot-dip galvanizing. Every field weld burns through the coating, so ask who touches up field welds and with what, such as cold galvanizing compound or matching primer and paint.
What should a barndominium steel frame plan include that a shop does not?
A barndominium is a house built on a steel frame. That changes the planning in ways a plain shop never faces:
- Framed openings. Windows, entry doors and overhead doors need jambs and headers designed into the frame, sized for wind load across the opening. Moving a window after the girts are cut means field cutting and welding.
- Plumbing in the slab. Every drain is roughed in before the pour. Get the floor plan final before the concrete truck is scheduled.
- Septic drives the site plan. An OSSF site evaluation and permit can decide where the house can sit on the tract. Limestone close to the surface can limit the system type.
- Porches and lean-tos. A wraparound porch tied to the main frame is part of the structural design. It is not an add-on bolted up later.
- Lofts and mezzanines. Living-space floor loads go into the frame design from the start.
- Lender and insurer requirements. Many ask for stamped drawings and inspections even where the county has no building code.
How should the slab and anchor bolts be coordinated with the steel building contractor?
This is where the Bertram scenario at the top goes wrong. Here are the caveats that matter:
- One plan, one revision. The anchor bolt plan should carry a revision date. The slab crew, the steel shop and you should all be holding the same one.
- Templates, not tape measures. Bolts set in a plywood or steel template, tied to control lines, stay put when the concrete is vibrated. The AISC Code of Standard Practice allows roughly an eighth of an inch between bolts in a group and about a quarter inch for group location. Hand-set bolts rarely stay that close.
- Check before the pour. Someone from the steel side should measure the bolts in the forms. An hour of checking can save a week of fixes.
- Know your ground. Around Liberty Hill and west into the Hill Country, shallow limestone and caliche can stop a pier drill and change how grade beams and embedment are detailed. East toward Georgetown, expansive clay swells and shrinks with the seasons, and the slab design has to account for it. A geotechnical report takes the guessing out of the foundation.
- Misplaced bolts are an engineering problem. Cutting bolts and drilling in epoxy anchors, or slotting base plates, is sometimes possible. It needs the engineer's sign-off every time.
- Let it cure. Columns go on leveling nuts or shims, and the base plates are grouted per the drawings. Loading green concrete early is a common shortcut and a bad one.
Which questions should you ask a steel building contractor before signing?
- Will the drawings be sealed by a Texas licensed professional engineer for this site's wind speed, exposure and topography? You can look up any engineer's license with the Texas Board of Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors.
- Who produces the anchor bolt plan, when will the slab contractor get it, and who checks the bolts before the pour?
- Is the steel fabricated in your own shop, or shipped as a kit?
- What welding standard do you work to? Structural steel welding in the U.S. generally follows the AWS D1.1 Structural Welding Code. Ask how the welders are qualified.
- What gets primed, what gets painted, what gets galvanized, and who touches up field welds?
- What panel gauge, coating and fasteners are in the quote?
- What is excluded? Dirt work, the slab, permits, doors, insulation, gutters, electrical and cleanup are the usual gray areas.
- If a hole is off or a door moves, who fixes it on site, and how fast?
A written quote that answers these line by line is worth more than a quick one-line number.
What slows a steel building project down after the order?
- Changes after fabrication. Moving an overhead door after the girts are cut and the jambs are welded means rework.
- Wind days. Sheeting a roof in a strong Central Texas wind is unsafe. Crews stand down, and they should.
- Rain on caliche. A wet ranch road can keep a loaded trailer or a lift off the pad for days.
- Summer heat. Crews start at first light, and steel in full sun gets too hot to handle bare by afternoon.
- Inspections and septic. In city limits, inspection scheduling sets the pace. In the county, OSSF approval often holds up a barndominium more than the steel does.
Planning your steel building with a Central Texas fabrication shop
TG Welding started in Georgetown under owner and operator Tim Giebelhaus and moved to Highway 183 in Liberty Hill as the work grew. The shop builds steel buildings, sets frames and sheeting on the customer's slab, and handles the related structural steel, gates, fencing and mobile welding. The process is simple: send drawings, a sketch or a photo with the site, scope and date. The shop returns a written quote in days, builds on a PO in the Liberty Hill bay, and loads out or installs on site. You can look through completed work or send your plans through the quote request.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a permit for a steel building in unincorporated Williamson County?
Often not a traditional building permit, since Texas counties generally cannot adopt a full building code. You may still need floodplain, driveway, addressing or OSSF permits, and residential rules can apply. Confirm with Williamson County development services before you order.
Can a steel frame go on a slab that is already poured?
Sometimes. The engineer has to check that the slab and grade beams can carry the column reactions, and anchors are usually drilled in and epoxied to their approval. Design the frame first whenever you can.
Is red iron or tube steel better for a barndominium?
Red iron rigid frames are the usual choice for the wide clear spans a barndominium shell needs. Tube steel works well for porches, carports and covered patios attached to the house.
Does a steel carport need to be engineered for wind?
Yes. An open carport has no walls to resist uplift, so the columns, bracing and anchors carry all of it. Ask for a design based on ASCE 7 loads for your site, especially on open or hilltop land.
Should outdoor steel be galvanized or painted?
Both work. Hot-dip galvanizing gives the longest protection with the least upkeep. Primer with a good topcoat works if you keep it up. Bare primer alone is not an exterior finish.