Flow and Function in One of America's Best Shops

Adam Eichacker is a fourth-generation farmer working his family's homestead near Salem, South Dakota, 30 miles west of Sioux Falls. Adam's family operation, Eichacker Simmentals, is a diversified grain and a registered Simmental cattle operation managed in partnership with his father, Steve, his uncle, Greg, and his mother, Cathy.

Since 1942, the Eichackers have worked the East River area of South Dakota, east of the Missouri River, which is known for its rich plains. "We have a very good conservation balance. The cornstalks get grazed by the cattle, and what can't be farmed goes to the cattle. We feed silage and cracked corn to the feedlot cattle," Eichacker explains.

The farmstead is marked by a row of grain bins, a long, gray Quonset hut, feedlots and buildings central to the dairy that once operated here.

Prominent is the farm's deep-red Morton Buildings structure built in 2022. It is a highly functional building, 13,000 square feet with 20-foot sidewalls and a 1,000-square-foot office complex featuring a wraparound porch finished with stone wainscot. It's a fine buffer against wind and rain.

The 81- x 150-foot building is designed for traffic flow and an efficient maintenance pipeline. Wide concrete and gravel aprons outside allow uncluttered space for equipment, deliveries and visitors. The building is heated comfortably in the winter and cooled in the summer. LED lights reflect off the white walls and down to the floor: a 5-inch, densified concrete pad infused with a hardening agent for high strength and a smooth finish. A 36-foot-wide washrack, segregated by a service door and an overhead door large enough for a forklift, is as much a place to contain the grease and dirt, even the odor, of a teardown as it is a place to clean equipment.

It serves, too, as the center of the family's annual bull sale. "One of the main reasons for this design was for a bull sale," Eichacker says. Morton structures have a look appropriate for sales that bring in as many as 400 bidders.

"My father and I just weren't happy with other steel structures. They look commercial or industrial. Aesthetics was very important to us. We wanted this to feel kind of like home for our bull buyers," he continues. A bank of four clerestory windows high on the back wall carries natural light down to the auction floor. Three cupolas on the rooftop are nonfunctional "but add to the eye appeal as visitors arrive at the farm."

Many of the early pencil-drawn plans for the building ended up in the wastebasket or in what became a folder thick with ideas. "Planning was not only the most important part of the process, but it was also one of the most rewarding once you see the finished project," Eichacker says.

The Eichackers' design is not short on doors -- something obvious in other shops with too few. A 40- x 18-foot Powerlift hydraulic door, three 24- x 18-foot overhead doors -- two of those on either end of the drive-through washrack -- a 12- x 12-foot overhead door for pickup trucks or forklifts delivering parts and supplies, and a half-dozen work doors scattered around the shop create easy access for humans and equipment.

"We put in doors all over the building; you're able to come and go through any corner of the building," he says.

Large doors are positioned for traffic flow -- the Powerlift on one end and an overhead 24-foot-wide door on a far wall. "Powerlift doors can be a little slow, but the large opening for accessibility is huge, and having the accessibility of coming in opposite ends of the shop is really nice," Eichacker says. "If you have everything torn apart in one place, you can still get something in on the opposite end."

The shop is heated and cooled by a geothermal system -- glycol in lines under the floor warming the shop in winter -- the same system cooling it by way of air handlers in the summer. The morning we visited, the glycol was 48ºF. Geothermal lines, 400 feet long, are buried 10 or 11 feet behind the building, out and back, in each of 14 trenches.

"I was skeptical at first," Eichacker says. "How was concrete going to heat the building? I was used to our old shop with forced air and propane. But, I'm impressed. You can open doors for 10 minutes in the winter, do the equipment shuffle, and within 15 minutes, you're right back to you didn't even know your doors were open."

Important to the quality of the auctions, but also for day-to-day work, is echo control. "We have our annual bull sale the beginning of March, and they draw 300 to 400 people. You have an auctioneer, big PA [public-address] system, microphones, speakers. We did not want this to get to be an echoey building," he explains.

Morton offers an acoustical feature to dampen echoes. Perforated acoustical steel is applied to the sidewalls and ceiling. Sound passes through the perforations and is muffled by the vapor barrier and insulation behind. The Eichackers made ample use of it.

"You're not afraid to grab an impact on some wheel nuts or drop tools on the floor. It doesn't hurt your ears," Eichacker says. "When we get to our bull sale, for weddings, family or local events, we are very happy with how the building absorbs the sound."

OTHER FAVORITE DESIGN ELEMENTS:

OFFICE/PORCH: "Initially, our plans had the office and kitchen inside the 81- x 150-foot box. But, it made things tight inside." Instead, the Eichackers added a 42- x 24-foot office structure outside -- space that includes an office, kitchen, lounging area, bathrooms and laundry. "We made a good decision. It moved all that stuff to an external portion of the shop and gave us a square space inside."

ELECTRICAL RUNS: "We didn't do any plumbing in the walls," he explains. "We wanted to leave the vapor barrier intact. And, I like the ability to modify things going forward. We've already added additional hookups for welders and outlets by the workbenches."

INSULATION: "You only get one chance to insulate a building," Eichacker explains. The family installed board insulation below the concrete floor and around the outside of the building to keep the heat from dissipating wastefully out the concrete. Sidewalls are an R-30 batt insulation with vapor barrier. The ceiling is both batt insulation and a blown-in top layer for a total of R-50.

SPARE CONDUIT: The Eichackers added empty runs of PVC under the concrete floor that enables them to fish electrical wires, camera lines, air and water lines, and the like under the floor.

LED LIGHTS: This brightly lit shop has five rows of overhead LED halos. Light spreads to all the corners. "You even get light down underneath the equipment, as it reflects off the floor. If I had to do it again, I could make a case for putting up six rows of lights in an 80-foot building."

BIG ASS FANS: The popular industrial brand offers fans that span up to 24 feet in diameter. Eichacker opted for a pair of 10-foot fans. He says they generate plenty of good airflow to all parts of the building.

COMPRESSED AIR: "Nobody likes to listen to the compressor," Eichacker says. It's mounted inside the same insulated room as the geothermal system. Compressed air is plumbed to 50-foot reels inside and out, plus a half-dozen drops inside the main building and another three inside the wash bay to deliver compressed air everywhere. "Wherever you're at, you can grab an air hose and go."

WATER: Well water serves the shop. "It's hard water, but it's cheap," he says. A water softener treats water supplies running to the kitchen, bathrooms, laundry, sinks and a dishwasher.

FLOORS: One section of the floor is poured to a zero grade for steel fabrications. Zurn floor drains are installed inside the wash area. A second run serves cleanups in the main shop area. Sediment flowing with wash water down into the drains is collected in a 500-gallon sediment basin. "We pumped that out this summer for the first time. It was only about half full," Eichacker says.

Even though they're happy with the building, there are a few things the shop owners might do differently now:

1. The Eichackers chose 20-foot ceilings. Upon further consideration, 22 feet might have been better. The fans hang down 2 feet from the ceiling. They can maneuver around them, but, "If I had to do it again, 20-foot, to me, with our equipment, is a minimum," he says. "Twenty-two feet would be better. I know it's a price jump, but it just gives you that much more room to put up lights, overhead doors and fans, and move in bigger equipment."

2. The Eichackers built a mezzanine for parts, tools and the geothermal air-handling equipment. The bench and tool area is underneath. The loft is supported by wooden posts. "Knowing what I know now, I should have probably installed a large, steel I beam to support the loft. It would have given us more open space and flexibility."

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