Shed levels advice

[Steevo]

Chocolate cake?????

Whatever cake you fancy!

 

[David.]

Do you expect to find some nice stone when you dig back into the bank?
If so you may end up with a lovely hardcored base and yard outside.
A good man with a 360 and you trailering spoil where he wants it for levelling would not take many machine hours.

 

[Forever Fendt]

Anyone with experience of earthmoving will be able to tell you

I know my little shed build was only a much smaller amateur job but you'd be surprised with the accuracy you can get with a water level if you don't have a laser level!

At least this way you can be sure the equipment has not gone out of calibration

 

[John Chance]

Half and half. Build shed. Blend levels in around it.

 

[suffolksmallholder]

@Steevo If you're digging into a bank, remember to allow enough space to work for the future. This also helps in keeping the air moving in this area & drainage if the bank is water-logged in winter.
SS

 

[Nearly]

Any pictures of cake side view and from above??

 

[Forever Fendt]

This is what you need ,with a good operator it could be the cheapest way round the job,this cost £450 to strip top soil and cut from a car parking area and push into building base and track it in The driver is 68 years old he had this machine new and only him used it and it had 19,000 hrs on clock

 

[Steevo]

That guy could do a lot of work in a day with a machine like that!

 

[Happy hillbily]

@Steevo If you're digging into a bank, remember to allow enough space to work for the future. This also helps in keeping the air moving in this area & drainage if the bank is water-logged in winter.
SS

They forgot to do that here, there's one and a half foot between my cubicle shed and a near vertical rock face, simple things like cleaning out the gutter is near on impossible !!

 

[MickMoor]

They forgot to do that here, there's one and a half foot between my cubicle shed and a near vertical rock face, simple things like cleaning out the gutter is near on impossible !!

Remember also a bit of room helps for marking out. A chap near here dug his post holes right against the bank and expected me to accurately mark out, when there wasn't enough room to place a peg for the tape! He also concreted his bases when the holes were full of water, and blamed me for not setting the levels accurately.

 

[Kevtherev]

You need room to work nothing worse than trying to place shuttering up against a face

 

[Lincsman]

I would start with the door (if only one) being level with the rest of the yard, then dig/fill from that point.

 

[suffolksmallholder]

I'd make sure all concrete levels fell by 25mm towards the door. This would ensure any water went out not in. I went to a very, very expensive yard in the Cotswolds on an RFS tour. Prince or even King Sheikhyourmoney was the owner and my very first thought was 'what a miserable yard to drive round.' There were a series of drains, beautifully organised in their rightful places to catch the rain-water but the falls were 0" to 8" all over resulting in a yard resembling a cross-country course. Someone forgot the 1 in 40 ratio or even 1 in 60 as the perfect fall.
SS

 

[Steevo]

I'd make sure all concrete levels fell by 25mm towards the door. This would ensure any water went out not in. I went to a very, very expensive yard in the Cotswolds on an RFS tour. Prince or even King Sheikhyourmoney was the owner and my very first thought was 'what a miserable yard to drive round.' There were a series of drains, beautifully organised in their rightful places to catch the rain-water but the falls were 0" to 8" all over resulting in a yard resembling a cross-country course. Someone forgot the 1 in 40 ratio or even 1 in 60 as the perfect fall.
SS

This is what I'm on about. It's far too easy to build the shed, and not worry about the yard until afterwards. This then creates the wrong size and direction falls in the wrong places which you are living with for years to come.

I would start with the door (if only one) being level with the rest of the yard, then dig/fill from that point.

That works ok it the shed only fronts onto the yard, but if there is sloping yard up one side the other too. The yard out front of the shed could happily be raised if needed.

 

[Lawless]

I would use Connops if I were you. They have all the kit including GPS mapping and software to go with it. If they had the job I am sure they would almost throw the service in so to speak. They have a very impressive bit of kit that they just walk around the yard with mapping everything.

 

[David.]

I think the secret is to set your levels with the next shed in the back of your mind; you may think there will not be one, but there usually is.

 

[Steevo]

I think the secret is to set your levels with the next shed in the back of your mind; you may think there will not be one, but there usually is.

Exactly what I usually try and do. The only downside is plans/circumstances may change before that point and it turns out you assumed something about the next shed that affected this shed, but the next shed never gets built, or is twice the size, or needs to be moved this way or that. Already crossed that bridge once on a different project that after a year of work/planning and a few £k has pretty much gone full circle and back at square one.

Once bitten.....

If I could find someone with all the skills who could map out a whole plan of how to incorporate all the required elements, at the right levels, with the right access, not pissing off the wrong people, they'd be extremely useful.

Until then.....it's up to me to draw on the skills here and there where possible and keep the plates spinning.

 

[dannewhouse]

I have done exactly the same thing but on a larger scale I have put 1 building up in a field but wanted to be able to extend and add another building all at the same level so I made a grid pattern on the field with electric fence posts and took levels with the rotating laser (you just have to remember a higher number on the staff is actually a lower reading) I plotted it in excel and inputted a proposed level you could work out the half way point ie so the cuts match the fills but do you really want to be infilling soil to build a shed on? I used a 10m grid which wasn't really accurate enough but I couldn't be bothered going smaller and it showed exactly what I wanted (the field looks level but has about a 2ft fall forming a v over a large width, I put the shed in the V so it looked high at 1st only 2ft though)

the measuring/doing the field was only couple hours you can do it on google earth using the altitude function but its not too accurate and only goes up 1m at a time.

remember to take a datum point ie somewhere that you can plot your FFL (finished floor level) from