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Col's Construction Blog

3 Mistakes Not to Make When Building or Buying Sheds

4 December 2018

Ethan Burton

Commercial sheds are useful when you need additional space for a fraction of the time and cost of building a concrete structure. They can also be customised according to your needs. The most important thing when building or buying a commercial shed is to ensure that it is safe for the intended purpose. Provide enough vertical and horizontal clearance for movement and consider your future needs, not just your present needs. This article highlights some mistakes business owners make with their commercial sheds.

1. Converting non-liveable sheds into liveable sheds

If you think that building a shed and later converting it to an office is cheaper, think again. Whether or not this is viable for you depends on your intended usage. If you want to lay out the interior just like a normal office, it's safer and easier to build a normal office right from the start.

For instance, shed codes ensure that they will not be structurally damaged by a wind storm, even though some movement or flexing is allowed at the height of a storm. Now, if the interior is fully lined, this movement can crack or even ruin the interior lining.

Also, the concrete slab is often shallow, definitely not deep enough to handle the interior lining. If there's any settlement in the soil, you can expect the shade frame to move and cause large cracks in the internal lining.

If you intend to use your shed for office space and hence need it to be liveable, this is still possible, but it's important to reveal this from the get-go. This way, the structure can be designed and built properly to prevent the above by constructing a stronger slab, providing for energy efficiency and vermin control and using stronger materials.

2. Laying the concrete slab in advance

This cannot be overstated: you must finalise the shed design before you even think about pouring your concrete slab. When you're still in the planning stages, lots of things may change, and for structural integrity, your slab must exactly match the design of your shed. Different sheds have different measurements for edge beams, footings and other shed components.

Another thing to note is that some shed manufacturers use the 'nominal sizing' method when advertising sheds. Usually, they round up the actual shed size to the nearest whole number, (e.g., 8 by 6 for a 7.4 by 5.7 shed). It would be wasteful to build a bigger slab than you actually need.

3. Not considering your application and soil

You'll need a thicker slab if you're parking tractors and heavy-duty construction machinery compared with normal-use vehicles. Your slab should be made thicker than your intended purpose needs. In certain cases, you must reinforce the foundation with steel beams.

Similarly, the soil conditions determine the kind of materials and slab you'll need for a sturdy shed. Some soils are reactive (they expand when wet and shrink when dry, meaning the ground moves). Special building techniques must be applied, or the soil shifting will impact the stability of your shed.  

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