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Evening all. I've just dismantled my 5ft x 8ft wooden shed that was in place when I bought the house 7yrs ago.
It will be replaced with either like by like size wise, or something 5ft deep and 12 feet wide.
The previous owner laid the shed on a combo of a few bricks, a couple of slabs and what looks like a few, very rotten, mdf boards and some old (also very rotten) carpets. All laid directly onto the soil.
Upshot, some very compacted earth under what used to be the shed and the extra space I can expand into is currently disused flowerbed.
So it's all about the base.
I was thinking concrete or flagged, with the attendant work digging out and creating a proper foundation, but one of my mates suggested a plastic base, made of interlocking grids that you lay on the surface and then backfill with gravel.
Seems great, way cheaper and easier than either slabs or concrete. Is it too good to be true though?
And if it is all good, what kind of ground prep is recommended, particularly with the bit of soft flowerbed?
Any thoughts, ideas, experiences most welcome 🙏
Oooh ooh I did a shit-ton of research on this.
I used these but I went with the bolt-down concrete version. The soft ground version I linked to might be what you want. Building the timber was pretty easy and it's off the ground so it'll be able to dry out. I used some sort of stick-on flashing to protect the edges so my timber stays completely dry anyway.
With a user name like yours I’d go for some compacted type one and a nice reinforced concrete base. It’d stop all your mates coming over to party!
Recently built a fairly sizeable insulated shed at the bottom of the garden and finished up using quickjacks. They worked well and were a lot easier to manage than laying foundations. QBS are fairly local to us and make and supply them as well as a cross section of other solutions including the interlocking plastic bases. https://www.shedbase.com/ They were fine to deal with.
My flippant post up there was actually serious, any shed base should be designed first for strength and then for rodent protection. It’s worth it because if they do decide to use your base as their home then they’re difficult to get rid of. The poster above has obviously got their own method of dealing with the problem!
I went with the plastic grids and gravel. Absolutely rock solid. Levelled the ground. Covered with weed membrane. Grids on top of that and filled with the gravel. Dead easy
TBH it varies wildly depending on what you're doing and also on what the shed's like. Like, mine is of the "raised floor with lots of relatively small runners" type which makes the floor really stable and strong but if you want to put one like that on jacks you need to build a hell of a frame for it. It also means flatness is important. But it'll sit completely happily on nothing more than a raked gravel bed. It's got a lot of weight in it- some engines, a motorbike, a couple of gearboxes- but it's all really widely spread. Some plastic sheds are similiar too.
I think it's also a lot about the sort of work you're able to do yourself and are comfortable with. Like, a concrete slab would be ideal for mine but I don't want a bloody great concrete slab if I decide to move it in future.
I managed
Old broken concrete / dirt from old driveway, compacted as best I could.
Layer of fairly fine gravel.
Plastic fence posts cut into 4" x 2" x 2" blocks (bought cheap from Gumtree) sat on half paving slabs (free in gumtree).
2x4 bearers on the blocks.
Shed.
It's got 2-6" of airflow under the shed. It's 11 years in and no rot yet.
Thanks guys, good advice and ideas. No rodents partying the night away (to my knowledge, but then I am a heavy sleeper), but did a have a wasps nest in my full face a couple of years ago (fun and games) and on removing the degraded chipboard found a whole ecosystem of snails, woodlice and a large, yellow frog with three clumps of eggs. The kids helped me relocate the frog and her eggs to a new den they made, who knows?
Lots of good ideas. The non-concrete/slab base options, would I need to properly compact the soft, flowerbed earth?
Few more answers since I started writing that reply. Matt oaa, can you explain your method in more simple fashion. I'm nothing of not a simpleton
Oh I meant to say but here is a cheat code from facebook classifieds, for compaction- wacker plates are free. A perfectly good, slightly older, slightly shabby wacker plate is easy to buy for about £200, £250, as long as you're quick to get on them when they're listed as they sell fast. They're built for hard use so your own garden use will barely touch it, and when it's done you sell it for the exact same as you bought it for, or if you're feeling oligarchic, give it a wash and sell it for £50 more.
Hiring isn't expensive and obviously there's the risk your ebay aquisition breaks or is junk but actually having one in the shed takes all the time and "right first time" pressures off, it is pretty great. Plus, MANLY!