Two-Story Barndominium Floor Plans in Arkansas

Because in much of Arkansas the land is the constraint, and everything that makes a site expensive is measured in area. On the Ozark counties the pad is usually something you build rather than something the tract hands you: SSURGO puts a representative slope of 12 percent or more across 65.7 percent of the Madison County survey area and 48.7 percent of Washington County, and building a level bench on that ground is cut, fill, retaining and drainage priced by the square foot. Rock behaves the same way. The Mountainburg series, mapped over roughly 38,700 acres of Pulaski County, is 12 to 20 inches to slightly weathered sandstone in its Official Series Description, and in the Sebastian County survey area the Enders series runs 47 to 50 percent clay from about 18 centimetres down to weathered shale at 122. Halve the footprint and every one of those quantities halves with it, along with the roof plane and the slab. What does not halve is height, wall area and the floor structure between the levels — and none of those care what the ground is made of. On flat Delta land with no rock and no slope the trade usually points the other way, which is why this is a site question rather than a preference.

Sometimes, and Arkansas cities give genuinely different answers, so this belongs on the checklist before the roof pitch is chosen. Little Rock allows 35 feet in R-1, R-2 and R-4A, and Sec. 36-338 gives the AF agriculture and forestry district a 45-foot limit — ten feet more than the ordinary residential districts — with OS open space also at 45. AF caps the main building and all accessory structures together at 25 percent of the tract. Jacksonville writes the limit in both currencies at once: Chart No. 1 at JMC 18.68.050 caps R-1 at two and a half stories or 35 feet, so a full second floor and a tall shop volume are measured twice over. Huntsville's R-E Residential Estates district caps buildings at 35 feet. Fayetteville sits at the other end — R-A, Residential-Agricultural, is the one district in that city with no maximum building height at all, subject only to a stepped setback for the portion of a building above one storey next to a residential district. A two-storey metal building with a shop bay under it is a tall building. On unincorporated land with no zoning that is nobody's business; inside a city it is the first number to check.

It roughly doubles the load arriving on half as much bearing area, and one Arkansas jurisdiction has written the consequence into ordinance rather than leaving it to a table. Fayetteville's UDC 173.02(B)(2)(a) sets the minimum width of a concrete footing at 18 inches for a one-storey building of 1,400 square feet or less, and 24 inches for two-storey buildings and for buildings over 1,400 square feet — storey count and floor area each reach the wider footing independently, so the 18-inch footing is effectively reserved for a small single-storey house. Reinforcement follows the width: two #4 bars in an 18-inch footing, three #4 in a 24-inch one. Footing thickness is a minimum of 12 inches of 3,000 psi concrete and the bottoms must sit at least 24 inches below finish grade, against the residential code's 12-inch floor at R403.1.4. The alternative in every case is a design sealed by an Arkansas registered architect or engineer. Elsewhere the depths still run past the state floor: Springdale revises building code Section 1809.4 at § 22-32 to an 18-inch minimum footing depth, and Benton County publishes an 18-inch frost line and requires steps in stepped footings on slopes of 10 percent or more.

Yes, with room to spare, and the scope sentence settles it in one line. The governing document for a one- or two-family dwelling is the Arkansas Fire Prevention Code, 2021 Edition, Volume III — the 2021 International Residential Code with Arkansas amendments — adopted by rule 015.01.22 Ark. Code R. 005, effective 1 January 2023. Its scope at R101.2 applies the code to detached one- and two-family dwellings and townhouses not more than three stories above grade plane in height with a separate means of egress, and to their accessory structures not more than three stories above grade plane. A barndominium used as a dwelling is a detached one-family dwelling, so two storeys is comfortably inside that — as is a third, if the plan ever wants one. What changes at two storeys is which provisions engage, not whether the code applies. The State's amendment list for Volume III, Chapter 3 is short and made almost entirely of fire separation, garage opening protection, emergency escape, sprinklers and smoke alarms, which is precisely the set a second floor over a shop walks into. Note what is absent from it: nothing in R301, so Arkansas supplies no wind speed, snow load, frost depth or seismic category anywhere in the volume, and R102.5 leaves Appendices AA through AW unadopted unless a city adopts them by ordinance.

It is the most common two-storey barndominium plan and it is buildable, but it is the version with the most drawn detail in it. Putting a dwelling over a garage is a condition the State of Arkansas legislated into: R302.5.1, the garage opening-protection section, is one of the handful of Chapter 3 provisions the Arkansas amendments touch, alongside R302.1, R302.2.1 and R302.2.2 on fire-resistant construction. The separation between the shop below and the bedrooms above is a designed floor and wall assembly with a rating, penetrations detailed and doors specified — not a plywood deck with a ceiling under it. Three more items follow from geometry rather than code. The floor structure has to span whatever the shop below wants kept clear, and a member carrying a floor is a different member from one carrying only a roof — the one place a second storey genuinely reopens the span question, and the reason a frame put up for a roof cannot later be asked to hold a storey. The stair has to land where it does not eat the shop's usable width or foul a door swing, and it consumes floor on both levels, which is the real area penalty of building up. And a shop is a noise, vibration and fume source sitting under sleeping rooms.

It reduces the quantity, and on a steep site that can keep the work under a threshold which would otherwise trigger a separate review. Two Arkansas cities publish those thresholds. Fayetteville's UDC 169.06(C) holds cut or fill slopes to a finish grade no steeper than 33 percent citywide and 50 percent inside the Hillside/Hilltop Overlay District, limits any slope to 100 feet without a terrace at least six feet wide, requires any retaining wall over four feet to be designed by an Arkansas registered professional engineer and field inspected and certified by that same engineer, and requires a geotechnical report for all proposed rock cuts and for any cut or fill of 10 feet or more. Little Rock regulates land alteration under Chapter 29, Article VI: Sec. 29-186(d) triggers a grading permit for a top-of-hill or hillside cut or fill greater than ten vertical feet or where total cut or fill reaches 1,000 cubic yards, and Sec. 29-190 caps fill or excavation at 30 vertical feet with individual cuts or fills limited to ten feet. Sec. 29-190(3) adds that the city official may require certified geotechnical analysis for sliding and global stability safety. A pad half the size is a smaller cut, a shorter wall and fewer cubic yards — the exact quantities both ordinances count.

The envelope changes shape rather than simply getting worse, and one Arkansas city checks the answer before anyone moves in. Stacking the same floor area halves the roof plane and halves the slab while raising the wall area, so the total surface enclosing the house generally falls — a compact two-storey box is a better shape than a wide flat one. Against that, the taller volume makes air sealing and the stair's stack effect matter more, and on a post-frame or steel building the girts and purlins are a continuous thermal bridge across more wall than a single-storey plan has. Fayetteville is where this stops being a preference. UDC 173.07(B)(1) requires all new residential construction to have a Home Energy Rating System Index rating completed by an independent RESNET certified home energy rater, or equivalent, before a certificate of occupancy issues; subsection (2) requires a city-supplied label showing the estimated monthly utility cost to be posted in a very visible location near the front entrance until the structure is sold or for at least ninety days, whichever is less. Washington County is one of only twelve Arkansas counties the 2014 Arkansas Energy Code places in Climate Zone 4 rather than Zone 3. Elsewhere in Arkansas nobody rates the building — which makes the detailing at the base rail, the eave, the floor band and the door heads a decision you make for yourself.