80×160 Metal Building: Costs, Sizes and Price Ranges

80x160 Metal Building: Costs, Sizes and What to Know Before You Buy

Twelve thousand eight hundred square feet of open floor is a big commitment. A wrong number early costs tens of thousands of dollars later. An 80x160 metal building gives you that floor with no interior columns, so a warehouse, a production line or a fleet of equipment can be laid out however the work demands.

This page is for buyers who have settled on the footprint and need the figures. You will find the line-by-line cost of an 80x160 metal building, what each extra foot of wall height adds, what moves the price, and what to check on the slab, permit and crew. Read it before the first supplier calls.

Why Clear-Span Framing Suits This Footprint

Structural Advantages

At 12,800 square feet, you need a frame that crosses 80 feet without a column in the way. Rigid-frame steel does that. It is the hot-rolled, welded I-beam framing often called red iron, and each frame is engineered for the individual building. The Metal Building Manufacturers Association notes that rigid frames have been designed to clear-span widths approaching 1,000 feet. An 80 ft span is routine work.

Steel also gives an 80x160 metal building documented strength. Structural members follow standards from the American Institute of Steel Construction, and each building is designed to the wind, snow and seismic loads of its own address. A regional guess will not do for a building this size.

Cost Per Square Foot Falls as the Footprint Grows

Kit pricing drops with floor area. Over 3,000 square feet a kit runs $7 to $22 per square foot, against $9 to $32 for a building under 1,500 square feet. An 80x160 metal building does not cost proportionally more than a 40x60 or a 50x80. The engineering, the delivery and the crew's setup time spread across far more floor.

What Fits in 12,800 Square Feet

Use should drive every dimension. A distribution floor needs different clearances than a fabrication shop, and wall height matters as much as footprint. Taller walls open up racking, larger doors and, at some point, a mezzanine.

Warehouse and Production Layouts

Warehouse and distribution users usually want tall walls for racking and forklift reach. Manufacturing floors often care more about bay layout for equipment than height. An 80 ft clear span suits both. There are no interior columns to route around and no dead zones in the racking plan.

Plan the loading side of your 80x160 metal building early. The 160 ft length leaves room for several dock-height doors along one or both long walls, drive-through bays for trucks and enough depth to stage inventory away from the docks. If forklifts and trailers share the floor, think about turning radius before you place a door. Moving an opening on paper is free. Cutting a new one after the shell is up is not.

Reading the Size and Neighbouring Footprints

Size is written width by length by eave, so an 80x160x20 is 80 ft wide, 160 ft long, with 20 ft walls. The prices on this page start at a 14 ft eave, the shortest wall in the table below. Racking and overhead cranes often need 20 ft or more.

If you need less room, the 80x100 metal building trims 4,800 square feet, and the 80x120 metal building sits between the two. For a long, narrower shape, see the 60x200 metal building. A smaller shell than the 80x160 metal building, with room to add a bay later is sometimes the more capital-efficient move.

What an 80x160 Metal Building Costs

The advertised price of a metal building is almost always the kit alone. It leaves out the slab, the crew, the site work and the permit. Those four lines are where a budget goes sideways, so each one is broken out below.

The installed total is the five lines added together, low ends with low ends and high ends with high ends. Most jobs land in between, because few projects hit every high or every low at once. An 80x160 metal building with a lighter frame, a rural crew and a level lot sits near the bottom. Red iron, a heavy slab and a metro crew sit near the top. Doors, windows and insulation are not in the total.

80x160 metal building prices by eave height

Every price above is for a 14 ft eave, the shortest wall in the table. Each extra foot adds roughly 3% to the kit. The slab, site work and permit do not change with height, so the installed total climbs more slowly than the kit does. A taller 80x160 metal building costs more, just not proportionally more.

The tallest door is about 2 ft below the eave. The header takes some of that height and the door's own track and mechanism take the rest. On the tallest walls, erection itself can run $15 to $18 a square foot when a crane is needed. That is more than the $5 to $12 band in the first table.

Want to test your own sizes? Run them through the metal building cost estimator, or lay out the doors in the 3D metal building designer before the quotes arrive.

What Moves the Price Up or Down

The spread between $232,200 and $597,500 is wide for one footprint. A handful of choices explain most of it.

Roof pitch and drainage. A low-slope roof keeps eave height, wind load and steel weight in check. Drainage matters more along 160 ft of roof than on a small shop, because a poorly planned gutter and downspout layout dumps a large volume of water at a few points.

Clear span or interior columns. True clear span removes every interior column. Some buyers choose a multi-span frame with columns at wider intervals to lower the kit price. Run that trade-off past your engineer. It only works if the columns do not collide with racking or equipment flow.

Wind and snow rating. Higher design wind speeds or heavier snow loads need heavier framing and stronger connections. Stamped drawings for a hurricane rating have run about 20% higher for the same size. Pull the exact values for your address from the free ASCE Hazard Tool. A site 20 miles away can carry different loads.

Doors and dock openings. Large buildings usually mix dock-height overhead doors, grade-level roll-up doors and personnel doors. Each opening is quoted separately and none is in the installed total. Overhead sectional doors are specified to ANSI/DASMA 102, and wind-load testing to ANSI/DASMA 108 matters in high-wind regions. The Door and Access Systems Manufacturers Association publishes both.

Insulation and ventilation. Steel purlins and girts carry heat straight past cavity insulation, which is called thermal bridging. Most current energy codes require a continuous layer over the framing as well. The DOE Building Energy Codes Program maps the requirements by climate zone. Spray foam runs $1.00 to $4.50 per square foot, priced by the area covered, and on 12,800 square feet that is a budget line of its own. Large interiors also need engineered ventilation, which is cheaper to design in than to retrofit.

Crew location. Metro and coastal erection crews charge 25% to 40% more than rural ones. That gap lands on a $64,000 to $153,600 line.

Foundation and Site Work

The slab is the largest single line after the kit. At $6 to $12 per square foot, a 4-inch slab for 12,800 square feet runs $76,800 to $153,600. It is rarely bundled into the advertised kit price, so check that your quote includes it.

If forklifts, racking or heavy equipment will run on the floor, expect a thicker or reinforced slab. Ask for that to be priced as its own line. The supplier's drawings show the column and rack loads, and a local engineer sizes the footings under them.

Site preparation adds $1,300 to $5,600 in total. The rougher the lot, the closer to the top it sits. Footings must reach below the local frost line and bear on undisturbed soil or engineered fill, per the International Code Council. Frost depth is set locally and runs from about 12 inches in the South to 42 inches or more in the far North.

Permits, Engineering and Code

Almost every jurisdiction requires a permit for a building this size, along with sealed engineered drawings. Permits run $500 to $3,100. There is no national size below which you can skip one. Ask your local building department early.

Confirm which edition of the building code your jurisdiction enforces. Adoption is state by state, and several editions are active at once. Your wind, snow and seismic values must match the cycle your inspector uses. Our guide to metal building permits and codes walks through the process.

Occupancy matters too for an 80x160 metal building. A warehouse, a manufacturing floor and an assembly space carry different design loads and exit rules on the same footprint. Tell your supplier the use before the drawings are sealed.

Why Professional Erection Is the Realistic Route

Smaller kits can be owner-erected. An 80x160 metal building is not one of them. Steel erection at this scale means crane operations, structural bolt-up to engineering tolerances and several trades working in sequence. The cost is the $64,000 to $153,600 line in the first table.

Owners can still save money on work they control. Site clearing, interior finish work and painting after the shell is dried in are reasonable to do yourself. The structure is not. Manufacturers often tie their structural warranty to professional installation, so an erection error can void coverage on an expensive building.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

An 80x160 metal building turns 12,800 square feet of open ground into clear-span space. The kit runs $89,600 to $281,600, and installed it runs $232,200 to $597,500 at a 14 ft eave. Wall height, the slab and your crew decide where in that range you land.

Do not let a single quote set your 80x160 metal building budget. Compare the lines in this guide against real bids from several suppliers, ideally from the same drawings. That one habit separates the buyers who overpay from the ones who do not.

Related Resources

• 80x100 Metal Building: Cost Guide
• 80x120 Metal Building: Cost Guide
• 60x200 Metal Building: Cost Guide
• Metal Building Permits and Codes Explained
• Metal Building Cost Estimator