A Shop for Dan #3: Musings on foundations

Okay, the Tuff Shed folks left us thinking that all we needed to do was provide a couple of level pier blocks. Reading through stuff on building foundations to codes leaves me wondering a bit on that, I believe that we’d need to build a foundation at least 12” deep and 12” wide with reinforcement steel, assuming we’re on fairly firm soil, soil bearing strength of 1000 pounds/square foot or so. So I’m pretty sure that the Tuff Shed sales pitch is slightly misleading, that no matter what we’re going to have to do some serious excavation and pouring.

If we go with a living roof, presumably we’re going to have to up the size of the foundation to deal with the added weight of the structure. I need to dig through and find a bit more about the sort of soil we’re on (clay, which is hard to chisel through in the summer, but relatively easy to dig in in the rainy months) and what sort of foundation requirements that’ll give us.

-- Dan Lyke, Petaluma California, http://www.flutterby.net/