I plan to build a summerhouse. What should I use for foundations?
It's a half-oval / elongated D shape, about 12' x 8', and I need a dwarf brickwork wall about 2' high. Between the walls will be paving slabs. Ground is flat, well-drained sandy soil. The structure on top will only be light, maybe 350lbs.
Should I run the slabs _between_ the walls? Or simply slab an oval and then site the walls on top?
Thanks
Too many 'slabs' here for me to envisage what you mean.
Do you mean you intend to lay flags as a floor inside the house? And the other 'slab' is actually the footings of the wall?
If it were mine, I would dig a trench 18 inches deep and a spade's width and put in 9-10 inches of concrete. Build wall and erect summerhouse, making a one or two brick step up into inside. Remove turf etc from inside and lay 3-4 inches of sand, then flag over...you can put a membrane down underneath the sand if you wish, to keep some of the moisture from penetrating up into the floor. It also keeps some worms / slugs out.
If it were mine I'd probably lay a raft of concrete nowhere near that thick. Provides a stable base and solves the flooring problem too. If you put the brickwork on top of the slabs I'd imagine that over time you'd get some movement and cracks.
WOW, go another 6 inch down and you could get building regs on a two storey house with those foundations :-0
Not a spades width you couldn't, and definately not 2 ft down, at least not around here, it's normally a minimum of a metre in depth and 600mm wide at the bottom. Apart from anything else, he doesn't give the size of the structure, nor whether it is to be a 4 inch, 9 inch or cavity wall, coupled with a sandy soil...hence my overcautious footings :-p
Yes. Timber is more work, and higher. For the use I envisage, paving slabs on sand would be just teh job.
Yes, although I'm not sure whether the floor will be above the footings, or will actually be the footings.
Could I _really_ cut corners, just lay slabs and then lay bricks/ blocks on top to make the wall? Or is that too cowboy?
Otherwise I guess I need to lay some sort of footings in a spade-sized trench, brick onto that, then lay paving slabs to span between the bricks. Obviously I'll also need to cut the slabs into an oval to match.
I don't like the poured concrete slab idea. It's a bit over-complex for what I'm planning, the structure on top is very light (a fibreglass dome) and so doesn't really need much, and I'm also concerned about possibly lifting the whole thing and moving it in a few years.
How are you going to lift a two foot high dwarf wall? Do whatever you want. You might want to fit some rebar into the wall to try to stop it cracking but it sounds like you're not too worried.
Break it apart and throw it away. Still easier than a concrete slab. If I do move it, it's because I'll be looking to preserve the fibreglass dome, not necessarily the brickwork. Although for that matter, I probably _could_ slice brickwork apart and re-assemble it. Certainly the paving slabs would be liftable and re-usable.
The paving slabs under the tractor shed (approx shed #4 of 7 in total!) still have their camouflage paint visible on them, from when they began life as part of Burtonwood airfield during WW2. I know I've lifted and moved them twice myself in the last 30 years, and they weren't new when we got them.
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