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Pole barn vs frame building
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A pole shed at 30-40 yrs is pretty well shot, a frame shed at the same age with some maintenece is good for another 30-40 yrs. I just won't build another pole shed when the cost is the same and the life of a frame shed is double. Frank.
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I'd argue that point Frank, to me it's like saying something along the lines of "All North American cars are junk.".
I've got a pole shed up at the farm that my grandfather and his father built during the first world war. It's still just as solid as it ever was.
I suspect it has more to do with things like soil conditions, local weather, construction techniques, etc. than it does about style of construction.
Oh, and before someone pipes in about wood in contact with soil, there's a log building at my gal's parents cottage that sits on 4 massive Hemlock sleepers (logs laying directly on the ground), it's a little out of level, but was built in about the 1850's. It's absolutely still usable as is.
Best of luck.
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Pole barn vs frame building
Frank, I did say I suspected soil conditions or such could be the culprit, and if every one in your area is bad, then that's likely it. But yes, you caught on, we do keep the good stuff up here. 
Jeff, if the logs you encountered were Oak I could certainly believe they were gone bad by then, up here they used a lot of Hemlock where Cedar wasn't available for those kinds of applications. The high sap content, which is also very acidic, makes a great natural preservative.
There was a story in the news up here recently that a developer was digging up a big piece of former industrial land that used to be (prior to dredging and filling) waterfront lands on Lake Ontario, in excavating they hit the remains of a wharf that had been buried in the filling operation ages ago.
The wood (large Hemlock pilings and beams) is solid enough that a local guy with a portable bandsaw mill is cutting into lumber for furniture and stuff, it is solid as the day it was cut well over a 100 years ago.
Best of luck.
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Pole barn vs frame building
No worries Frank.
If you look in the fine print on the left, just under your name there is the words "edit | Delete" if you click on the 'Delete' word you can remove the double.
Funny thing about the Creosote, it's only banned for us regular folks, the railways aren't affected by the ban. Something tells me they have a bunch more of it in use than we do!!
That green-treated stuff is junk. One of my friends has a big fence & deck company near here. He says they have to leave the wood strapped in a bundle until the moment they are ready to use it or it turns into a pile of twisted crap. He has the lumber yard band it into 3 groups, the framing, the decking, and the stairs and railings, that way he can leave all but what he needs right then securely bound up.
I read an article about it and the results of a study were that they were treating it when it was way to wet, as a result the soggy wood couldn't absorb much treatment, pressure or no pressure.
Best of luck.
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Pole barn vs frame building
I suspect a lot of that comes down to pure and simple, economy of scale.
Large posts and beams are a 'custom' thing that can be sourced from only the larger, straighter logs. Dimensional lumber on the other hand can be carved out of nearly anything these days with the computer controlled sawmills we have today.
We are lucky in that we still have a large bush lot and our own little sawmill to make whatever we need, others are not so lucky. Case in point, my FIL is rebuilding his dock at the lake, it was built using rough cut timbers on log cribs full of rock. He went to the local lumber yard to order 4 pieces of beam, each one being 6"x8" and 30' long. They quoted him $6 a running foot, or $720 for 4 beams. In comparison, 'making' them by laminating 2"x8" boards would have been only a little over $200 for all of it.
Likewise, in a stick frame building, there is more labour, but the materials cost far less so in the end it's a cheaper way to go.
Best of luck.
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They had a kid painting some kind of green stuff on the bottoms that would be in the ground.
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Frank, that 'green stuff' is chromated copper arsenate (CCA), as the name suggests, it contains a derivative of arsenic, this is what prevents rotting, it is toxic to the mould and such.
It's also why 'green wood' has been widely banned.
There's a local builder who uses a slightly different twist on 'poles' for buildings, he sets pieces of used concrete utility poles, they're formed under very high pressure, then uses steel collars to connect the wood column to the top of it.
The theory is there is never any wood in contact with the earth.
He apparently got the idea from an old idea of putting a piece of used railway tie in the bottom of a hole sideways, then setting the post on top. It acts both to spread the weight out, and to transfer creosote as a preservative.
I don't think he's been doing it much more than about 15 years or so but to date I've never heard of anyone having a problem with any of his work.
Best of luck.
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