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Ground screws for shed builders

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Interesting. Anybody used them? I just paid £8 a square foot for concrete slab.
 
That was my first thought - how much would it cost to get them in the ground.
Bit of 4x2 bolted on to top and someone to walk around whilst another holds it steady.

Take it in turns to stop getting dizzy as A+E are busy these days!! 🤣
 
I looked into them once and decided that it was probably best left to a properly equipped "expert".
In the end my son went for cut off lengths of soil pipe buried in the ground with concrete in them.
 
I used a post digger, threaded rods and postcrete. Being able to level the wooden base with just a spanner was quite nice.

On my next one I think I’ll save my pennies for a bit longer and go for a concrete slab as it will be lower to the ground.

Concrete will need a good DPC, unlike my garage has unfortunately. The floor there is sweating moisture.
 
how does that work exactly
You set the base frame of the workshop on top of concrete piers, if wanted you can bed a bolt into the setting concrete to fasten to.
Piers can be done in all sorts of ways, the depth depends on finding some undisturbed soil ( below the frostline, but that’s not much of a problem in the UK) , diameter of the piers and how many? Well you need to work that out- sorry, my sons workshop as per this photo used soil pipe sections cut off so they were all level back filled around and filled with concrete, in the US they use thick cardboard tubes available in different diameters. Each floor joist needs a pier at each end and some in between depending on size of joists used and expected use of the building. Anyway a pic.
Ian
D0177A63-DCD8-491B-AFF0-4B6D1791290D.png
 
Another way we came across the other day is to use cut off lengths of concrete fence post, with pored concrete around then bolt to the sides, in my opinion, yes to the method but not to bolting to the sides.
Ian
E656C7C4-7F83-451E-944B-4AE5654A881A.jpeg
 
Another way we came across the other day is to use cut off lengths of concrete fence post, with pored concrete around then bolt to the sides, in my opinion, yes to the method but not to bolting to the sides.
IanView attachment 176685
Agree with you, those bolts are pretty close to the top of the timber, gonna be a nice thud once the building is up and all that weight splits the timbers 🤪🥴
 
all that with tubes seems to defeat the principle of a pile. a pile relies on the depth of and the friction of the sides of the concrete on the hole in the ground
 
all that with tubes seems to defeat the principle of a pile. a pile relies on the depth of and the friction of the sides of the concrete on the hole in the ground
Well yes that’s true but these aren’t piles, they are piers and that’s why you excavate down to undisturbed soil, anyway they work.
 
I used these for my shed - https://shedbasekits.com/product-category/quickjack-soft-surfaces/ - no special tools needed, just a large hammer to drive the screw pile into the ground. The compromise of course is that all that is holding the shed down is the relatively small contact area of the screws...
Not sure I'd be overly keen on those- very little preventing 'uplift' from pulling them out of the ground... Say a combination of lots of soaking rain and a high wind could see them easily being 'pulled up' out of the ground on the upwind side of the shed...

These are the type of 'screw anchors' we use on solar panel array frames- although it is easiest using a rotary 'drill' attachment on the bobcat (which is there anyway both to dig the trenches for wiring, and as a forklift for lifting/moving the frames into position), it is possible to 'hand drive' them in using a bit of timber screwed/bolted to the top as a 'T handle'...

And they can handle a LOT of force...
1709150501495.png

Four of those would likely be serious overkill for most small 'shed' workshops (that particular one is 1m tall and made of thickwall 76mm diameter pipe, but they are readily available in a variety of sizes (some are truly insane- a 6m long version in 114mm diameter thickwall pipe is available from the same mob lol)
🤯
You could tie off the Goodyear blimp in a cyclone to that big one!!!
 

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