Time for another woodshed? Oh go on then…

Gazed cherries? Kids won’t appreciate them at all.

Otherwise, well done. Good productive man day.

Building a shed, baking little cakes, then an electric exam.

This fella needs to decide if he’s Arthur or Martha.

^ ^ 😀

The jedi shed builder will be along soon to sort this one out..(puts kettle on and awaits Mcmoonters arrival)

Shoot, I missed all the action.

Great work Stoner. Are going to clad the walls? I’d leave them open to aid the wood drying process.

I’ve never used to post spikes before. The ground here is loose to about 8 inches then there’s semi sandstone layer. I have to quarry through it to get the posts deep enough. It’s as hard as concrete but it drains well. To keep the posts vertical I cross brace them with scraps of 2×1 or what ever is to hand until I can get a roofing rail nailed up.

Now you’ve seen how straightforward it is I expect each and every one of you to have one built by the end of April to give you plenty of time to fill it and season your firewood for next winter.

Now you’ve seen how straightforward it is I expect each and every one of you to have one built by the end of April to give you plenty of time to fill it and season your firewood for next winter.

Do we get graded? I’m only up for it if there’s grading 😉

Do we get graded? I’m only up for it if there’s grading

I’m not so sure formal grading is the way forward. Plenty of pic updates and with helpful suggestions Is better.

A good build thread for me is graded on a laughs per page basis. Rate My Brickie is the benchmark.

Humbling 😐

Re the cupcakes – please tell us you haven’t been using Hora’s sock as an icing bag/

mcmoonter, I’m going to do it. Soon. New shed build is imminent.

one question you have not answered. How do you stop the shed from sinking its posts even deeper over time?

Anti Gravity nails….

This question is important to me as I have a shed, which cost the previous owner of my house 2k and they just lay it on 2×4 bearers which have now sunk and I’m getting ground contact and rot.
So I am thinking of dismantling it sinking posts like you putting the old shed walls around them and fitting a new floor.
Its that or dig a mini foundation, but I am drawn to the post idea..

My shed rests on paving slabs on the lawn, they spread the load so that the posts don’t did in.

I laid a massively overbuilt concrete slab for mine, it’ll be there forever. The base I mean, not the woeful shed I bought 🙁

Stoner……Shed skills – 10, icing skills – 2 for at least trying but a cherry ain’t gonna hide that shambles.

This is an over-buit shed foundation:

[/url]
Pumping concrete 60m[/url] by brf[/url], on Flickr

Took three concrete trucks to fill it!

Not only do I have an inadequate shed I’ve been top trumped on base too. 😥

one question you have not answered. How do you stop the shed from sinking its posts even deeper over time?

In my situation, unless the posts have have stealth pneumatic drill capabilities, there is no way the posts can sink in to the ground. I use a two metre long steel pinch bar to quarry the holes out. It works for me. The ground where you are may be different.

Remember trees aren’t rooted in concrete. You could dig out a slightly larger hole and sit each post on a couple of bricks to spread the post footprint. I can’t see why that won’t work for you. I like the idea of the building sitting well above the ground with plenty of air circulating underneath. Gutter the rain water away and rot should be history.

I’d be keen to hear more of how Stoner’s post spikes work.

so you compact the ground below essentially?
How deep do the posts go in?

so you compact the ground below essentially?

No it’s rock hard, if anything I’m loosening it. The longest 4×4 posts I can find locally are 10 feet long. I sink them 18 inches into the ground. That still leaves enough to work with at the top, if a post has been a bit short, I will nail a bit of 4×2 to it then add another bit of 4×4 on top.

If they are all braced together the chances of sinkage are reduced too. Concrete may work for you if the ground is super loamy.

hmm, we don’t have permafrost down here in devon. 😀

I shall dig a test hole.

Remember too that the only weight a log shed is holding up is it’s roof, which isn’t a lot.

There is a lot of weight in my studio, if I felt the ground was soft I’d probably have concreted the posts in.

yeah my shed is full of dh bikes, lawnmowers and tools n stuff..

Looking good, very envious of all this she’d building. Was think about getting a wee log cabin for junior sailor to play in and to be used as a home office.

Now I am considering building a wooden building, anyone know of any good websites for advice or have any pointers?

shedtrackworld

Stoner, good work Sir.
Can you enlighten me about the spikes.
Can you get different length spikes?
When I get around to leveling out the new shed base I will need to use some these or concrete in some posts for an area of approx 9′ x 6′
The ground is pretty soft ie 8″ or so of sharp sand on top of top soil. Not sure how deep I’ll need to go for a good footing?

woohoo, 85%. In. Your. Face. Electricikery!
*vvvzzztttttt*
oofarrggyerbastard!

Shoddy icing? I was going for the “Volcano” effect. And as for glace cherries, it has been Jr tested and deemed acceptable.

toys19/mcm – post spikes work fine there. I prepared that gravel area a couple of years ago with 8″ of hardcore. Over that is a weed membrane and then I put ground guard interlocking plastic plates before filling with gravel. To prepare the ground today, I had to cut away a small portion of the ground guards. The spikes are driven through the hardcore so that the base of the post box sits flat on the hardcore. It’s not going anywhere. Not to mention the total weight of the shed being supported by 7 contacts points probably amounts to no more than 7lbs/in.

It will be clad mcmoonter, but Ive borne in mind your earlier posts on airflow and going for a “now you see it, now you dont” style clad. i.e. each bay between uprights gets an alternating featheredge board on the inside then outside. The posts are 4″ square so there’s plenty of airflow while still retaining the logs without having to do the whole wall building with logs thing.

When I built the woodstore (more a pole barn really) down the other end of the field, that is on Keuper Marl – basically a mud clay that just goes down all the way to Hades. So for the posts there I have to dig out a big hole, set the post and then fill with concrete. Its not like it’s taking much weight though, but the main reason to do it is that clay heaves and shrinks through the seasons so to stop the posts becoming loose its a good idea to have a large surface area for your pile.

toys19 – as I see it you have 3 different ways of supporting your shed contents:
1) on a suspended floor hung on your posts
2) on a frame floor that sits directly on slab bearers
3) on a filled floor a la footflaps

for 1) then yes you will need to look at providing decent post bearing if you dont have a bedrock like mcmoonter. Read up on post foundations with back fill.
for 2) you may the ground good with hardcore and maybe a thin layer of sharp sand or even dry mortar mix on to which you set and level concrete slabs over a sufficient area that your shed base can rest, and your shed walls then can either be attached to posts or to the base itself.
for 3) call wrightyson, he loves his concrete 🙂

granny_ring
The spikes are about 40-50cm long below the post box. (some are longer)

You can also get concrete-in ones that are about 6″ deep that you set into either your slab or a small footing. Finally you can also get bolt down ones which you can fix =to your pre-laid slab. I used them on the other end of the shed where I had already laid a load of concrete (it’s about 18″ thick actually. “Balancing load” my hairy arse!)

Stoner – when are you going to stop playing with construction and come and do some proper work?

Fancy a chip install?

here you go:

http://www.catnic.com/spike.aspx

http://www.catnic.com/concrete-in_post.aspx

http://www.catnic.com/bolt-down_support.aspx

By the way, the fence height spec is to do with side wind load on the spike, not vertical mass resistance. So if your shed is properly built it will transfer wind load across the whole structure, not just the post fixings.

bear – Im going to book in my HETAS next month. Cant wait.
Where’s your chip job? Would love to drop in if I can get there and back and be useful between dropping the boys off/picking them up from school.

Ok cheers, your answer to toys helps also.

I have to crack on also. One of my oldest clients has just sold his estate and has a barn with app 150 tons of barn dried cut/split oak, ash and beech which I can help myself to! Its a massive heap, got to borrow a flatback for a day and get busy.

Stoner, looked at a possible job today, they have about 12 acres of coppice to work with, currently have a 90kW oil boiler.
Work will start next Jan if goes ahead.

*does sums*

12 acres of the right kind of coppice should yield around 15tons dry weight of material a year, so 60,000kWh of lovely warmness. My barn on paper needs about 23,000kWh pa.

Thats a mighty big boiler.

tang – you need bigger pockets.

Big house but not that big.
Have another biggie to price too, pellet boiler heating house plus some holiday lets, could be multiple boilers cascaded together….

A friend with multiple WINDHAGER boilers in a communal build is having problems with theirs. Big system losses. But that’s another story and not sure its one that can be sorted out politically.

What sort of system losses?

On that note, we just finished two x 100kw pellet boilers installed in a care home – will knock their £49000 oil bill down to £26000 for the pellets.

Bear – do you know the ETA boilers at all?

Quick google, yes I’ve seen them around. Where is the care home? Big market for biomass at the moment.

Stoner I might have heard something about that.

Bear, probably.
Bristol.
Award winning.