How To Build A Level DIY Shed Foundation

List of Supplies Used – https://geni.us/MrBVeJ
8’x 12′ Shed Kit – https://geni.us/5uHcAjx

In prep for building an 8’x 12’shed kit from Home Depot, I will walk you through how to make a level and secure shed foundation without breaking the bank. I will also direct you to an alternative if you would like the next level up or if you have a considerable slope on your lawn.

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how’s it going you guys it’s Scott with everyday home repairs and today I’m going to walk you through how to make a foundation for your shed now the shed I’m building is an 8×1 12 and it’s actually a kit from Home Depot but this is going to be valid whether you have a 10×10 or a 10 X6 you can still do the same approach now if time and money were No Object I’m sure we’d all just pour a concrete pad but in many of our situations we want something that we can put in fairly quick and also isn’t going to break the bank so at a cost of $150 this is going to provide a level and secure foundation for my shed so let’s jump into it I’ll show you how I actually located this spot before I started the digging now there’s a lot of different ways to do this I wanted to reference the detach garage and make sure the back of the shed was right in line with the back of this detached garage so I just put a stake in place and I’ll bring a string over to the location of the shed I’m using the perimeter of the floor the 2x4s here 8T X 12T to serve as where that shed will lay out now I’m just taking two measurements at the detach garage and when those measurements are exactly the same I know that line is perfectly parallel and coming off which I can use as a reference for the perim boards I have here for my shed so I’ll just shift those over slightly and I’ll know everything is lined up so you’ll see here in a second I’m going to have three 4×4 skids actually running underneath the floor here so what I’m going to do is take these wood staks I like the positioning here of the end of my shed so I’m going to get the stakes in the right spot and then go ahead and drive those into the ground and then these will be positioning for when I bring those skids in to locate my concrete blocks I’ll have my end point in positioning for the three skids here so I’m going to come in one foot from this side one foot from this side and then also position one right in the middle which would be 4T from either side that will be the positioning of those skids so we’ll take our measurements there’s the one foot the 4 foot and one foot from the other side just start knocking the stakes in they don’t have to go too deep but just like any project you will run into some snags like I did here on the third Stak tried a metal one to see if I could poke through thinking it was a tree root it was not it looked like a piece of concrete so I got out a big negotiator here and got the chunk out so I could move everything back in place line it up check my measurements making sure I’m still aligned and then setting that third stake in place so now with the back of the shed position and really I’m not fully squaring up my floor yet we still have to do all of our joist and a lot more work now I just want a really good reference but to make sure that these side walls are square to the back surface we’re just going to use what’s called a 345 triangle so go ahead and measure 3 ft off of our corner here and then go ahead and do a 4T side which we already have marked with the stake and now I can use that as a reference to measure the hypotenuse and the hypotenuse here I’ll put a nail in the hypotenuse should be 5 ft exactly if it is not we might have to adjust those sidewalls a little bit to get that to a perfect 5 ft and then that makes sure that that corner is a right angle and everything is set correctly so I’m just a little bit off and what I need is that wall to go that direction slightly so I’ll make a little bit of adjustments we’ll remeasure and then see if we can’t get everything squared up okay small adjustment made we’ll use that nail use that nail to hook our the end of our tape measure and now we got right at 5 ft okay so now I know back wall is good and then we have a nice 90° here if you wanted to you also could measure your diagonals but again I’m just locating my three skids right now so we can find the actual areas that we need to dig out for our concrete blocks so I will do the diagonals once we actually do the floor right now it’s good enough for doing the locating on our skids so it should be pretty easy we’re just replicating for this side and then we’ll have each end point for the three different 4×4 skids and we’ll be able to lay those out and start ating our concrete pads so what I’ll do is just temporarily Place each pad all nine in place use a 4×4 skid to get those exactly where I want them and then use marking paint to put an outline 3 in around that so a little bit larger than each of the pads I’m not digging down much all I’m doing is removing the sod here so once the sod’s removed I’ll be able to Tamp down the dirt and then add in the gravel prior to the blocks so now we have the nine locations for our concrete pads that’ll have the three 4×4 posts running here and then that’ll really support our floor system but now we need to level everything up what I’m using is I do have a laser level here that’s setting a parallel plane that I can reference so that plane and you can’t really see it very well but it’s still a little bit bright out but that plane right now is reading to the ground right here it is 38 and A4 off the ground so 38 in and 1/4 off of the ground so you’ll kind of pick your highest spot and for me it is it is right here so 37 and 3/4 I think that is my high spot so then I’ll go to some of my low spots in cross reference now I’m reading out 40 in so that means from the 37 and 3/4 to 40 in is I’m going to have 2 and 1/4 in of elevation change between these two spots so we’re going to need to make up that difference because I want the 4×4 post to clear this highest spot so I want my Surface here to be at least that high and actually just a little bit higher because I want the post to be off the ground so they’re not soaking up any moisture and and it extends out the life of the skids and the overall floor system so I’m going to build this one up here the first one and we’ll kind of show a focus and view of that putting down the gravel tamping it down leveling everything out with a torpedo level and then getting that in place where it is actually higher than the ground surface here so I’m probably going to go to about 37 in or maybe 37 and 1/2 in to make sure once that 4×4 post is on this concrete pad and then level across that it’s clearing all the grass clearing in all the mud and we won’t have any moisture issues and then we’ll continue to reference and build everything up just remember these pads are about an inch and a half thick they’re called 8 in x 16 in x 2 in but they’re only about an inch and a half thick so you can stack multiple concrete pads on top of each other opposed to having build that up with gravel so just keep that in mind when you have the lower sides and you really have to build up you can stack multiple concrete pads on top of each other and like everything else you’ll find links in the description for your reference so you can reference those for your own projects let’s go ahead and start this one as a reference get it all leveled up and then start working on all the rest of our eight pads so it’ll take you multiple iterations at each of these pad locations you want to get the right elevation but also use that torpedo level to make sure it’s level in both directions once I get three in a row I’ll put the skid and then check with the 4ot Buble level just to make sure everything is level and confirmed once I get multiple skids in place I will also be able to check across both of those confirming that front to back left to right were all leveled out so I’ll finish off here with our last three pads again you can use multiple blocks to save yourself a little time opposed to piling a bunch of gravel in that hole then once we get that we’ll go ahead and get the last skid to finish things off so with all the skids set now I have my floor also in place I was able to check level on multiple locations both on the front which looks good and also over on the side and overall everything is looking great now just note I am going to use some hurricane straps to tie this floor down to those three skids 12 total straps now there’s a lot of different options when it comes to foundations for your sheds and we are just kicking off a completely new channel called everyday shed where Carlos is going to be over there going through all the different aspects of sheds and many many many different designs so you can choose the one that fits your own needs so you can check out this video right here and it’s kind of the next level up when it comes to foundations going to take a little bit more time a little bit more money but it is a little bit more secure and a better foundation for your shed now if you want to see this Home Depot kit it’s about $2,000 8T X 12T I’m going to do the complete build and finish this guy off check out this video right down here and I’ll also include all the different modifications I made to this kit to make it a little bit better so thanks for joining me on this video and we’ll catch you on one of those next ones take care