Why Karns Is Pole Barn Country
Karns has the highest concentration of pole barns and metal outbuildings of any zone in the Knoxville metro. Beaver Ridge Road, Oak Ridge Highway, Bob Gray Road, Karns High Road, and the streets that branch off them are lined with one to five acre lots, almost every one of them with a 30x40 or larger pole barn out behind the house. Those barns serve as workshops, vehicle storage, hobby spaces, hay storage for hobby farms, and increasingly, barndominium living conversions. The vast majority were built without insulation - the post-frame design has no wall cavity to put fiberglass in, so the original spec was usually bare steel.
Spray foam is the only practical retrofit. Two inches of closed cell on the interior steel skin and underside of the metal roof eliminates condensation, stops the summer steel-roof radiation that turns the barn into an oven, and keeps the building usable in January cold. Our typical Karns pole barn package runs $7,500-$16,000 for a 30x40 to 40x60 building. Barndominium conversions, which are increasingly common as Karns property values climb, run $14,000-$30,000 including the interior framed walls.
