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Nick's practice shed

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Nick's practice shed

Postby bluebirdnick » 24 Jun 2017, 10:37

All,

As mentioned in my introduction thread, I want to build a small storage shed (1.8m x 2.4m) before taking on a far larger project, a small workshop which will be approx 5m x 3m.

This thread will be for the shed, but at the outset I do want to get a bit of advice on the groundwork needed for both buildings as I might do the groundwork for both at the same time (especially if I can find someone to do the hard work for me).

Our garden is bordered by a huge laurel hedge, which is some 4-5m high throughout. The garden is totally overgrown - this was a probate property that was left to rot for decades before we fixed it up last year. It is also covered with ivy, brambles and holly.

Workshop

I plan to put the 5x3m building at the bottom of the garden, next to the garage belonging to the house behind, which forms part of the boundary. Here are some pictures of how this looks currently:

Image

Image

As you can see, it is far from a clean site (and this is after a full weekend of digging out brambles and other weeds) and not very level either. I plan to build the workshop in the corner, which will be close to the laurel hedges. It will sit inside the boundary by a meter so I can get in to maintain it. There is also a large willow tree about 6-7m away from where the workshop will be. There are also at least 2 tree stumps in the area where the workshop will go so I will have to dig those out too. I am going to stay under 2.5m to avoid PP, and as it is a meter from the boundary I am not expecting to involve building control.

I was hoping to dig a number of holes, fill them with concrete, then put down blocks and get them all level and build the workshop off that, having flooded the area underneath with weed killer and put down some sheeting to prevent stuff growing underneath it. I want to avoid having to put down a concrete slab if possible for reasons of cost, effort, and most importantly because the wife just doesn't want a large permanent concrete slab. However, having spent a lot of time reading up on how you guys have been building your sheds and workshops, I cannot find any examples of people doing what I have planned and almost everyone seems to put down a concrete slab. I would obviously have a suspended timber floor, also built off these concrete pads.

Questions: Is my plan workable? Or do I simply have to have a concrete slab? Would a shallow continuous trench foundation be an acceptable middle-ground?

Shed

I plan to put the shed about half way down the garden, against the laurel hedge. There is currently a concrete path which I intend to take up when I get time to sort out the garden. The shed will sit in the spot behind the old chairs in this picture. I am going to replace the fence (obviously) - possibly with a wire fence to allow the laurel to grow through it:

Image

I want to avoid having any concrete in the ground for this whatsoever if I can manage it: the shed may well be moved when we come to do the garden because we don't know at this stage how we are going to use the garden. I do need it now though: I've got loads of stuff from the garage sitting in the living room with nowhere to put it, because we have no garage now (it was knocked down to allow access to build a rear extension).

My plan was to dig down about 200mm; compact the ground; put in geotextile; fill with hardcore; compact again; cover with sand; put down a plastic sheet, cover with gravel and put concrete lintels on top of this, get them level and build off that (with a DPC on top of the lintels).

Questions:

I planned on putting the plastic sheet down as some sort of DPM, but does it actually serve any purpose? I would put down a DPC on top of the lintels anyway.

Or is this all just too lightweight?

Comments and suggestions welcome. Just to manage expectations: I work veeeerrrrrrryyyyy slllllooooowwwwwllllly, so please don't expect any exiting progress pics for a while! The shed is a must-have and will be up by the end of the summer because we have a baby on the way and I need to get all of my stuff out of the house; but the workshop is likely to be 2018 (although I would like to get the groundwork done in the summer). I have 4-6 weeks of paid leave in Jan/Feb so I'm leaving it until then to do the fun bit of actually building the thing.
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Re: Nick's practice shed

Postby Andyp » 24 Jun 2017, 11:27

Nick,
I'll leave the real experts to comment on your proposals. but I do know that Tim has built his workshop off off concrete pads as you propose.

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Re: Nick's practice shed

Postby Rod » 24 Jun 2017, 12:05

Somebody on UKW has built a shed on concrete piers - just looks a bit odd/rustic to me.

For many, many years my 8'x6' storage shed sat on a layer of levelled paving slabs with no issues.
What you are proposing is more than enough and I would leave out the plastic sheeting. A DPC on top of the lintels would be fine.

Building outside in Jan/Feb will not be fun!!

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Re: Nick's practice shed

Postby 9fingers » 24 Jun 2017, 16:47

Just a thought. Do you think you will need the shed once the workshop is up and running? I only ask as you might be better off with a commercial shed which with care you might get 10 years out of that can go up quickly and cheaply to resolve the storage problem. No doubt a DIY shed will be much stronger and potentially last longer but you won't beat the price of a ready made one.
Not trying to steer you one way or the other just probing your thinking.
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Re: Nick's practice shed

Postby bluebirdnick » 24 Jun 2017, 18:43

It's a fair question. I will need the shed even once we have the workshop. We currently have an old shed that is falling apart and I will get rid of that when the workshop is here. Its ultimate role is to hold the gardening stuff. It is also very much a practice run. I know I can assemble a bought shed, but that doesn't tell me if I can build a workshop. By building a shed with the methods used on this site for walls etc, I will get a feel for how I will get on with the workshop!
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Re: Nick's practice shed

Postby 9fingers » 24 Jun 2017, 19:40

Fairy nuff - I thought it was worth asking.

In term of building wall panels the experience from the shed will read across to the workshop and possibly aspects of roofing too. If you think you will need to move the shed in time. use of bolts and screws in certain places will make disassembly easier.

Foundations will be quite different betwixt shed and workshop. Working out the number of piles and beams for the workshop will need some thought as well as sensible estimates of eventual floor loading when you have the dead load of machinery in there.
Not that I know the answer, but a decision will have to be made if you have enough room underneath the floor to clear out vegetation and wildlife from time to time or to have it close to ground and rodent proof boundary between your piles.

It will certainly be interesting and bring some new aspects to our growing collection of workshop build projects. Don't worry about asking lots of questions as long as you post plenty of pictures of te design and progress.

Cheers
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Re: Nick's practice shed

Postby Mike G » 24 Jun 2017, 19:58

Hi Nick.

That build-up is do-able, with caveats. I suggested something like that for someone else on here who didn't want to put a solid base down. Your big deal is the detail of the floor, and the junction of the cladding etc with the lintels. Plus, of course, drainage if there is any chance of the water table getting up to the level of the excavation. Have you done a sketch of how you think the floor/ wall/ lintel junction will work?
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Re: Nick's practice shed

Postby bluebirdnick » 25 Jun 2017, 11:13

Thanks all. Here is how I envisage it working for the workshop. The DPC is the red line, the strapping is the yellow line:

Image

I have tried to stick to the "variation" plans, with the following changes:

1) bringing the concrete pad up 150mm and sitting the floor joists directly on it (DPC)
2) using a 140mm deep concrete lintel to replace the brick wall (if I can use a 100mm lintel that would be great).

I envisage spacing the pads at 900mm centres as 900mm is the length of a manageable concrete lintel, but if I can spread them out further that would help. The floor joists will consist of a frame that forms the perimeter of the floor, with joists running the width of the floor at approx 600mm centers.

Clearly the sight of the concrete pad and lintel will be quite ugly so I am wondering how best to mask this. I need to put in some sort of mesh to stop animals getting under there, but might try to mask it all with some trellis or something, acknowledging that it will have ground contact and so will not fare well.

For the shed it is rather simpler:

Image

Hardcore is purple; dpc is red, strapping is yellow. The thin blue line is geotextile.
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Re: Nick's practice shed

Postby 9fingers » 25 Jun 2017, 11:25

Nick,

Something is messing up your colours. I've looked at the originals on photobucket and they are messed up there too.
Whether your lines are too fine and getting distorted in the photobucket compression algorithm? but it is possibly worth getting to the bottom of the problem sooner rather than later for discussing the finer points of construction.

HTH

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Re: Nick's practice shed

Postby bluebirdnick » 25 Jun 2017, 11:32

To be clear, this is what a plan of the floor would look like for the workshop. It is not to scale and as has been pointed out I don't even have the correct number of pads here - it is illustrative only. There would be concrete pads at 900mm centers around the perimeter to support the lintels and the perimeter of the floor joists. I will also put a few pads in the middle (number tbc) to help support the floor.

If I can get away with doing concrete pads at larger centers and using longer lintels, then great. I have seen a lot of US shed builds that use cardboard tubes to form similar concrete pads, but cannot see any in the UK that do it this way. That would be ideal, as I think it would be much easier to get them level that way rather than using shuttering.

Image
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Re: Nick's practice shed

Postby bluebirdnick » 25 Jun 2017, 11:36

9fingers wrote:Nick,

Something is messing up your colours. I've looked at the originals on photobucket and they are messed up there too.
Whether your lines are too fine and getting distorted in the photobucket compression algorithm? but it is possibly worth getting to the bottom of the problem sooner rather than later for discussing the finer points of construction.

HTH

Bob

OK, thanks. I am working on my chromebook at the moment so I am a bit limited in how I can work - I did these on Powerpoint online, converted to pdf and then used an online pdf converter to get the images. I am trying to get to grips with sketchup too, so should be able to do something a bit more accurate soon!
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Re: Nick's practice shed

Postby Rod » 25 Jun 2017, 11:36

How about piers at 600 and do away with the lintels?

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Re: Nick's practice shed

Postby 9fingers » 25 Jun 2017, 11:39

So looking at the workshop base you will have a matrix of 7 x 5 (35) concrete pads or just around the perimeter, 20 with maybe a few in the middle to support the floor?

OK posts crossed! but I think your diagram has exceeded the 900mm centres for a 5 x 3 m building

Seems a lot more work than laying a slab or just a strip (ring beam) foundation.

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Re: Nick's practice shed

Postby bluebirdnick » 25 Jun 2017, 11:43

... and here is the floor for the shed. I will just build a base on top of the three lintels, and then build the walls off that:

Image
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Re: Nick's practice shed

Postby bluebirdnick » 25 Jun 2017, 11:52

9fingers wrote:So looking at the workshop base you will have a matrix of 7 x 5 (35) concrete pads or just around the perimeter, 20 with maybe a few in the middle to support the floor?

OK posts crossed! but I think your diagram has exceeded the 900mm centres for a 5 x 3 m building

Seems a lot more work than laying a slab or just a strip (ring beam) foundation.

Bob

Thanks. I just want to do this around the perimeter rather than in a matrix, but I will put some in the middle too (number to be determined) to provide additional support for the floor. I do not have heavy machinery; the weight will be in the walls and the roof. If I can do this with longer lintels and concrete pads at, say, 1.5m centers then all the better! A 1.5m long lintel would weigh about 30kg so would still be manageable.

I am trying to minimise effort and cost really, in particular as the site is hard to access. I have had people take a look at doing a slab and have said that getting access is so hard for ready mix concrete that it is going to be excessively expensive. As concrete will need to be mixed on site, the advice from the people I spoke to was to minimise the amount of concrete needed, which is why I am trying to minimise digging.

If I could do away with the concrete lintels and simply put down the wooden floor joists and build off those then that would be even better. I put in the concrete lintels because it raises the wooden part of the building which seems to be one of the main aims of the workshop designs on here.
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Re: Nick's practice shed

Postby RogerS » 25 Jun 2017, 12:10

bluebirdnick wrote:.....
For the shed it is rather simpler:

Image

Hardcore is purple; dpc is red, strapping is yellow. The thin blue line is geotextile.


Aren't you going to end up with a manky pond underneath your shed ?
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Re: Nick's practice shed

Postby bluebirdnick » 25 Jun 2017, 12:17

RogerS wrote:Aren't you going to end up with a manky pond underneath your shed ?

Hmmm. Is this because water would drain in to it from the rest of the garden? The shed would cover the footprint where I dig it out. I had hoped that the water would actually drain more easily from the area I have dug out than the rest of the garden, and it is right next to some huge laurels that I thought would prevent it getting boggy but if there is something I need to do about drainage then happy to do so!

I might try to set the lintels so that they are at least partially below the normal ground level too - might that help?
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Re: Nick's practice shed

Postby RogerS » 25 Jun 2017, 12:39

I'm not an expert but I do know that water usually ends up where it wants to go and not necessarily where you want it to go. I think it will depend on whether or not surface water will find a route into it. Once in, it may or may not drain away - depends on the level of your water table.

Or you may find that it becomes a sump and that water from the adjacent water table oozes out and fills it up.

You could dig a trial hole or even the actual hole, cover it with plastic and wait and see. The plastic would need to be of a large enough size that it dispersed any rainwater well away. The idea being that any water that you find in it has come from the adjacent soil.

Hydrostatic pressure springs to mind. I think Rod might be your man on this ?
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Re: Nick's practice shed

Postby Paul200 » 25 Jun 2017, 13:14

Rod wrote:Somebody on UKW has built a shed on concrete piers - just looks a bit odd/rustic to me.

For many, many years my 8'x6' storage shed sat on a layer of levelled paving slabs with no issues.
What you are proposing is more than enough and I would leave out the plastic sheeting. A DPC on top of the lintels would be fine.

Building outside in Jan/Feb will not be fun!!

Rod


This one?
Image

Odd and Rustic? Thought that was a description of me at first ;) but seriously - we live in a rural, agricultural area and this style of building is everywhere. I suppose in isolation it looks so, but we believe it suits the area. Our near neighbours are building an eco house up the valley that looks very similar!
Image

I could have had the ground levelled and laid a slab but there's a burn running behind the bank and I didn't want to disturb its course and risk water running towards the house - hence the pillars. Eventually I will be building staging on the ground along the high side to house my bonsai collection, which will 'soften' the look a bit.
Image

One question I'm surprised no-one on UKW has asked about is the potential vermin nest underneath - we have a highly effective team of cats who do sterling work in that department so I purposely built the base to be easily accessible by said assassins. They really do work as a team - fascinating to watch!

I would be happy to talk about building techniques with you Nick but they are already adequately covered on here and you have people who know far more than me helping you out. Good luck with the build!

Cheers, Paul
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Re: Nick's practice shed

Postby Rod » 25 Jun 2017, 13:15

Introducing something like this could form a "sump" but it's difficult to get around that ie preventing water getting into it unless you fill it all with concrete.
So really you want to allow any water to escape so placing a geotextile at the soil interface will be fine. You only need a DPC at the lintel.

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Re: Nick's practice shed

Postby bluebirdnick » 25 Jun 2017, 13:40

Thanks all. That shed looks great - how large is the gap between the floor and the bottom of the shed on that largest pier? My ground is, fortunately, more level than that which will mean less work, but it would be good to know what I will end up with visually. What did you build the shed walls off? Did you put in concrete lintels per my initial proposal, or did you just put the timber frame directly on to the piers? If you did a thread for the build of your shed, it would be really helpful if you could send me the link.

Rod - thanks for the advice on the base for the shed. We had a trial hole dug nearby when we did the foundations for the extension last winter. It was 1m deep and was open for about a month - it didn't fill with water all. Does that give me any comfort?

If it is of any relevance, we have clay soil.
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Re: Nick's practice shed

Postby Paul200 » 25 Jun 2017, 14:48

Thanks Nick. Here's a link to my WIP on UKW - http://www.ukworkshop.co.uk/forums/beer ... 05755.html

It's all timber frame with the floor timbers sitting on strips of DPC on the piers, with occasional pieces of slate to bring everything up to level. I need to trim the piers down at an angle away from the building at the back to prevent water sitting on top of the pier around the floor timbers - everywhere else the cladding overhangs the edge to prevent this. The depth of the highest pier is 50cm - which caused me some concern because the max Permitted Development height of 4m is measured from the lowest point in Scotland, rather than the highest point as I believe it is in the rest of the UK!

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Re: Nick's practice shed

Postby Andyp » 25 Jun 2017, 15:27

It is not only rodents you need to be wary of under sheds but foxes and badgers too. In our old house badgers took up residence under my neighbors shed, she used to feed them :twisted: . When they started to extend a tunnel under my slab I took action. Postcrete down the hole. I had to do this a couple of times, then I moved. :)
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Re: Nick's practice shed

Postby bluebirdnick » 27 Jun 2017, 00:43

I have been playing with sketchup to try to get a model of the shed. This is where I have gotten to. Note that it is too tall: I stupidly made the side walls 2.4m high instead of 1.9m. This shed is within 2m of the boundary so I need it to stay under 2.5m total. The large overhang on the left hand side is deliberate: I want somewhere to store firewood. Although I am not sure if this will really work- the overhang might not be big enough or it might be too far above the firewood. I am not yet sure If I need to support the weight of the overhang with posts.

I've not worked out how to show dimensions on the diagrams so here they are:

width (outside wall measurement, not accounting for the cladding: 2.4m
length (ditto): 1.8m
height at eaves (from bottom of concrete lintel): 1.9m (model currently has this at 2.4m)
height at ridge (ditto): 2.45m
Door height: 2.05m
Door opening: 1.1m (deliberately wide)
Roof pitch: 18.4 degrees

And some assumptions as regards materials:

Concrete lintels: 65mm x 100mm (DPC on top of lintels)
Floor joists: 100mm x 50mm
Floor material: 25mm ply (or maybe 2 x 11mm OSB3)
Wall studwork: 47mm x 47mm
Rafters: 100mm x 50mm
Ridge board: 150mm x 50mm

I have not shown any noggins on here but I do expect to put plenty in.

All timber is pressure treated C24 timber. I have not picked the cladding yet but the wife wants loglap, so it will probably be loglap unless that is a terrible mistake. Tanalised 22mm log lap costs about £1 a meter. I am tempted to insulate this just to see how much effort is involved (doing a manageable, less expensive trial really is one of the main purposes of building the practice shed), and because in the meantime it is going to store my tools. In the last house they were stored in a bad garage and they rusted up in no time so I am keen to do what I can to prevent that! I have (tried to) space the studwork for the walls to create bays the same width as cavity wall insulation batts. Rafters are at 600mm because that equates to half a celotex sheet which is neat. Same goes for the floor joists. I will line it all with 11mm osb3 or WBP ply if I do insulate. Roofing material TBD. I am aware that the shallow pitch limits choice: I would like to give EDPM a go if possible because that is the front-runner for the workshop (which will also have a very shallow pitch roof).

As always, comments welcome!

Image

Image

Image

EDIT: mistake 1: The model shows a full sheet of plywood on the floor, and then another third to make it up. This means that the join is unsupported. I 2x 2/3rd sheets would be better to get the join over the additional supports I have above the middle lintel. I have assumed that these will be offset to allow fixing, so I might have to double them up to provide the proper floor support.
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Re: Nick's practice shed

Postby Phil » 27 Jun 2017, 07:24

I am a clueless builder. :?

The fundy's will be along soon. :D

The left overhang for firewood – I would make the overhang longer for more protection, fit a nice beam across underneath next to the edge and then in the middle have a treated round pole (decent diameter) planted into the ground to support it right in the middle. Tie it together with a strap.

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