How to move a heavy shed?

chris jung · 2008-03-02T13:14:32+00:00

Hi,We are getting a nice older shed (a solidly built homemade one, not a commercial one) and have a spot picked out for it in our back yard. I've visited our town's Building/Zoning office with photos, sketches & our lot layout to fly this project pass the code enforcement officer (he said it looked fine) and got advice on foundation requirements (4" bed of gravel under the shed, 6" deep around the perimeter. After shed is in place, we will attach it to the ground with 4 anchor ties).One problem we will have is that we will need to move the shed onto our property before we will have the foundation ready. It will be transported by a tilting flatbed truck and placed on cinder blocks about 5 feet to the side of the final spot.Even though the sq footage of this shed isn't huge (8'x12'), it's solidly built, is already insulated and drywalled and I betting weighs a lot - especially a lot more than we could muscle around. We have no idea how to move a solid beast like this five feet to the gravel foundation without tearing up the lawn or messing up the foundation. Is there something that we could rent that would help in this? Or does it make sense to scout around for round poles (old telephone poles?) to roll it into place? Any sage advice on this?Thanks,Chris

Mar 02, 2008 20 Replies

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We have one about 8'x8', speaking of small sheds, and it was positioned almost exactly in the middle of our small back yard, very poor feng shui. I finally got pissed off enough at looking at it that I decided we should move it. Several people told me to just buy a new one, but I couldn't justify that since this one was in perfectly fine shape, with minimal rotting at the bottom of a couple of pieces of T1-11, and why would I want to throw away $800 or more?

So I got some friends together, totaling 5 women and 2 men, and we lifted up this thing and moved it along some 4x4 posts that acted as rails on the ground. The job supervisor was a guy whose dad used to move massive gravestones with not much more than a couple steel rods, so he knew how to use leverage. We moved the shed about 10 feet to a spot right behind the garage that is about 10 feet wide exactly, with the garage to one side and a stone wall on the opposite side (and the neighbor's fence on the back end, hence no room for a come-along).

None of the Internet resources I found were any help for our particular situation, not even this:

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. We had NO room for any backhoes or come-along chains as we were moving this thing; it was brute human strength, pretty much. We just barely got the thing back there, and I am pleased to this day. Soon I'll need to reroof it.