How to Build a Woodshed
(Page 3 of 8)
August/September 1995
By John Vivian
Location
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Place the shed where it can be filled and emptied most quickly and conveniently for your wood-burning style. I like to haul one easy truckload (a half cord) of 4-foot logs from the woods at a time, dump them in front of the shed, chain-saw them all to length on a sawbuck and then split them as they are burned; nothing like splitting the next day’s stove logs and chopping out small splits and kindling for the cook range to work up an appetite of a winter’s evening. So, I need a good sized wood-work-up apron in front of my own shed. You may have wood cut, split, and stacked by the cordwood dealer and will want to locate the shed directly on the drive. Or you may prove how life oughta be lived by skidding whole trees out of the woods with a team … so you need a lot of space behind the shed to maneuver 30 feet of tree trunk on a singletree and chains behind a matched pair of Belgians that steam in the winter cold, and stamp and shake their great lovely heads and strain for the barn and their evening grain.
Don’t even consider building a woodshed with a wood floor. You can’t toss logs for years onto anything but expensive, 2-inch-thick oak or it will get pounded to splinters. You can build your shed on rotproof CCA-infused (pressure-treated, or “PT”) beams or creosoted landscape timbers and set it right on the sod. But the bottom course of fuel logs can get so wet and buggy you won’t want to bring them in the house … and eventually they’ll form a floor of punky wood that can infest the shed with dry rot, termites or carpenter ants. Plus, in time, the building is bound to settle unevenly and look skewed. Better is to spend the time to put in a good-draining base of rock or gravel.
Grub out sod and the upper 6 inches or so of dark topsoil — down to light-colored, hard subsoil in an area about a foot larger all around than the shed’s base (dig out a 9-foot-by-5-foot rectangle for an 8-foot-by-4-foot 1 1/2-cord shed). Scrape the surface so you have a flat, level surface of undisturbed soil (no matter how hard you tamp it, dips or holes filled with loose soil will settle, making the surface uneven). Then, fill the shallow rectangular pit with an even layer of crushed rock or clean gravel. For the most solid foundation, fill in 2-inch layers, tamping well. You can rent a commercial motorized or hand tamper, or pound it with a wood post … or drive the truck back and forth over it.
This shed is heavy and sturdy enough to stand up to most weather, but if you get really high winds — say you live in a tornado alley in the Midwest, on the ocean or big lake or at the narrow end of a windy valley, you’d do well to anchor the foundation. Dig 2-foot-deep upside-down mushroom-shaped holes at each corner. When the foundation beams go in, drill holes through the corners and attach standard “L”-shaped building anchors. Set the bent ends into concrete poured into the anchor holes as you place the foundation.
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