Weird Shed idea - help please

[Broman]

I tried this in the flooring sub-category, but perhaps that is too narrow of an audience....

please help me!!

http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=121176


Thanks!


~Bro

 

[nehog]

I think there was a good consensus that you needed much thicker flooring and framing to do what you are planning to do.

 

[ishiboo]

Its simple, concrete. For a reasonable fee a concrete pumper will come out and drop the concrete right where you want it. The pumper has a hydraulic boom which will go right over the top of your house. A small (or even mini) skid loader will handle the ground prep... the rental center will likely have a mini skid loader that fits through a 36" door.

When the concrete is placed, you can use pressure treated wood furring strips over the concrete, and whatever wood you'd like to see over the top... all the look without the work.

You CAN do this in wood, it would just be more expensive, a ton more work, and an overall pain in the ***.

 

[brownbagg]

so you dont want to hurt your new landscape grass but you plan on keeping a truck and motorcycle back there. make up your mind, google "georgia buggy"

 

[Broman]

so you dont want to hurt your new landscape grass but you plan on keeping a truck and motorcycle back there. make up your mind, google "georgia buggy"

Not sure how to take this - but did you look at my whole thread?
The hot rod &/or bike will never set a tire in my lawn....That's kind of the idea. And I just dug into that hill side and put in a french drain system - which caused all the work to get it back in shape....

And ishiboo, I have plenty of experience doing concrete - I don't know what concrete work is like in your neck of the woods, but I think it *****, lol. I'd much rather build a deck. One of the biggest problems I have is that I work mostly alone. I don't have much access to help and it's like pulling teeth to get help on any kind of regular basis. Pouring concrete is intense in labor and speed and many other variables. At least when I am building a deck I have as much time as I want to spend. There's nothing to setting posts then bolting up a rim joist and so on....it's like legos.

And as far as cost goes - I'd pay the premium to have such a neat & unique place to work and hang out. To a degree....

I just did my driveway - that **** was not cheap my any means. Like I said in the other thread - this is my preliminary work plan. I need to iron out the budget and the plan to see if it's even reasonably possible. That's why I am here and that's why I am asking.

I might just have to go view a wooden bridge somewhere and down scale that, lol.

~Bro

 

[spooler41]

Brpman, just look at this project as a very large trailer with out wheels. There are plenty of wood deck trailers that have wood decks and they don't seem to have any problem with a car sitting on them.

...........Jack

 

[ibedayank]

Brpman, just look at this project as a very large trailer with out wheels. There are plenty of wood deck trailers that have wood decks and they don't seem to have any problem with a car sitting on them.

...........Jack

add the small surface area of the tiny wheels on a floorjack and you just might hear...CRACK

wood rots....gets eaten buy bugs aka termites
whats your hotrod worth to you??

there is a good reason why garage floors are concrete and bridges are no longer made out of wood

 

[Kevin54]

If you want concrete, rent a concrete buggy. To save on the grass, you can lay down cheap sheets of plywood or OSB. Now if you want a wood floor, you can do that too. My shed is made from 4"x4" lumber and on top of that the shed is tongue and groove wood face screwed to the 4x's. All of this sits on a bed of gravel approx. 8" thick. If I could get a vehicle in it, I wouldn't be afraid of doing any damage. The 4x's are maybe a foot apart in the frame. I have had tow hooks hooked to it and lifted one end to drag it out of the way when I was doing some driveway work. I also had it lifted at each end by two skidloaders and moved approximately 400'. The shed is a 12' x 16'. If you engineer it right you could park a tank on a wood floor. Just make sure that where you want a car to sit that it is beefed up under that area. You figure, you are only going to have 4 spots touching. The right lumber will let you do that. What you do not want to do is set the building up on pier blocks or let me rephrase and say too few of pier blocks. That is where you will be asking for trouble. The only way you could do that is have many pier blocks underneath to absorb the weight. Just think in terms of a house built on piers and the weight they are supporting. If you go that way the subframe needs to be really stout and the weight needs to be distributed out equally to all piers.

 

[Broman]

Okay, I had a discussion today with someone who had no idea what I was talking about - this 'outside' perspective made him think about it in a way that made clear and simple sense....


I will comment further in the other thread....


~Bro

 

[bobemmerich]

Heres my take...kinda long-SORRY-My current "garage" has a wood floor. It isn't a plank floor, it's 3/4 plywood. I was looking into those "pre-fab" garagees and that's how I got the idea.
I have a flat bed of soil where my old garage floor was. I dug down 48" and placed in the sono-tubes and filled with concrete for piers at IIRC 3' intervals.
Now the interesting part: I have 4x4's running across the piers at 30" OC. On top of those I have 2x6's 18" OC, so it kinda looks like a grate. On top of that I have the plywood. Everyone thought I was nuts, but it's been 7 years and the floor has held all my tools/boxes, various project Mustangs, and a few times a minvan and my SUV. Complete construction cost for my 16x20 "oversized shed" including sheetrock was 1652.00. To have a 4" slab poured in my area would have been double that alone.
In my area there are a lot of older houses with a plank floor garage, and they hold up just fine.

 

[Broman]

That is VERY close to the advice that I got from the fellow at work.
He told me to sink the sono-tubes and lay a grid of beefy joists - no need for the post-in-hole design.

He said the question mark would be in the spanning of the sono-tubes and less about the 'beef' of the joists. You got your's at 3'. That's not a bad idea. I was throwing a dart and thinking 4', but how can you go wrong with more?

Now we're talking. Let the cement lovers have their blanket of concrete. I want something more organic and something that I can build by myself.

The big surprise is that you got yours done so cheap. That is a very cool thing.
Heck I even considered doing plywood base with planks on top just for appearance. That ratchets up the beef factor and spreads the weight out.


We'll see. Not to design everything to scale and get a BOM going. I wanna see if I can make this happen!!!!


~Bro

 

[bczygan]

A couple of things. First check what you MAY do with zoning and building and HOA. Then consider that any floor structure will be taller than surrounding grade and you need a method to get things in and out, be it a ramp or other method. Consider drainage. Most importantly, any flooring system you use based on anecdotal evidence, may or may not work as advertised for your application. If you really want to know what works you need to define the loads you will subject it to, and engineer your floor system to accommodate those loads. It's not hard to do. Even if you way overbuild the floor, if you miss one thing, like over spanning the joists, or under sizing the floor boards, things won't work.
Here's one that will definitely work, no concrete involved.
Remove grass, topsoil and any loose organic material in an area 12" bigger on each side than the finished shed.
Compact existing sub base material.
Install a base of limestone with fines and compact until 2" above surrounding grade. Slope the outer 12" away from the middle and down to existing grade (For drainage).
Install a solid bed of 6x6 treated landscape timbers in the area of the shed. Install your flooring directly on this substrate and build your walls on this flooring system. Bring your wall sheathing down just below the flooring to overlap part of the 6x6's.