Diy Storage Shed Foundation

You can buy some great looking storage building kits at you local home store. The kits come with everything you need except a good floor system and foundation. Most of the floor kits are untreated wood and untreated wood and contact with the ground is a recipe for a storage building that won’t last very long.

It's a waste of money to spend hard earned cash on a nice storage building and then have it self-destruct in a few years because the floor rotted out. A building of any kind needs a good stable foundation that lifts it away from contact with the ground.

Concrete makes the best foundation without a doubt, but sometimes it is hard-if not impossible-to get a ready mix concrete truck into the backyard. One could wheelbarrow the wet concrete, but my experience with a wheelbarrow full of wet concrete has not been good.

Here is a design for a permanent DIY storage building foundation that works well and is comparatively easy to build. You can buy everything you need at the local home store and bring it home in the trunk of a car, although, It may take several trips.

The construction materials are simply dry pre-mix concrete sacks and concrete blocks.

Construction Procedure

• Layout - The concrete block stem wall outer edge should match your building's floor dimensions outer edge should match up with your building's outer rough wall dimensions. The siding should just lap over the wall slightly or if the building is metal, the bottom rail should line up with the outer edge of the concrete block stem wall. This allows water to drain to the outside instead of going under the building.

• Trenching - I usually use a garden tiller to dig the trench and have a helper follow behind scooping out the loose dirt. Standard garden tillers are usually about 16-18 inches wide, which is ideal. For maximum stability, you should dig the trench deep enough so the lower part of the concrete bags are below the frost line. Your county agents office should be able to furnish this information.

• Laying the concrete bags - You can use one layer of concrete bags for a light storage shed type building or a double row, as show in the drawing, for heavier buildings. Also the bags can be laid end-to-end or side-to-side. Roughly level the bags as you go...adding or removing dirt under the bags.Keeping everything level as you build is essential.

• Stack the concrete blocks -alternating joints in the block stack and over the concrete sack joints. Start finish leveling with the first row of blocks. You can fluff up the sacks, pack them down or add a little of the contents of a sack to help level the blocks.

• After the blocks are stacked and level - drive rebar down through the openings in the blocks and through the mix sacks into the ground. Every block opening should have a piece of rebar driven through it into the ground. Try to buy pre-cut lengths of rebar if you can.

• The mix sacks - must be saturated with water to activate the concrete and make it set up. I just throw a garden hose in the trench and allow it to run until the mix sacks are saturated, this usually takes several hours. Add water as necessary to keep the sacks wet. Let everything to set for a day or so to allow the concrete to set.

• When the mix sacks are solid - recheck everything for level. re-level the blocks if necessary. Mix up concrete fairly wet and pour into the empty spaces of the blocks, this locks all the blocks together-making a solid unit. The j bolts are optional, depending upon how you want to attach the building to the foundation, some buildings may use concrete screws.

That's about it for the DIY Foundation. It's a simple construction method and you carry it all in a wheelbarrow and no need for ready mix concrete trucks tearing up the landscape.