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Like the best magazines, this article consists mainly of pictures - as it is nearly Bank Holiday weeking and I am heading off to a Camping Barn near @recoveringacademic's place with friends. The problem is straightforward. About 5 years ago on moving to the current house I had a 8' by 8' shed constructed in a corner of the garden which consisted of (perceived) well-packed rubble from many years ago. We used a base of concrete fence-posts laid flat to allow some minimal give, and room to expel any unwelcome undershed-dwellers, and to avoid the extra expense of a full concrete slab. How wrong I was. The ground turned out to be as movable as a slow-motion mattress, probably due to the rubble not being as compacted as thought, heave from a nearby tree, and a succession of extreme summers. The thing seems to move by up to a couple of inches at one end or the other up or down depending on how the weather, the tree and the rubble are changing. And the shed has needed adjusting twice since it was put in, and it still looks wonky. A further issue was a frame on the shed not quite strong enough to prevent shear distortion (ie the roof moving sideways relative to the base to give a rhombus shape.) I decided to use a product from ASP Wallbarn called Adjustable Support Pads, in this case their Megapad product which supports 1500kg per pad, and which give nearly 4 inches of vertical movement on each pad. These were installed under the existing posts using a couple of trolley jacks and a bit of digging. The pads can be adjusted after installation. The cost for 8 pads delivered was just over £70. If you order these or similar from online trade or retail sellers, then you may well be much more heavily clobbered by expensive shipping costs. I ordered these over the phone from Wallbarn, and they even reduced the £15 shipping cost to £7; the products arrived the next morning. Total time taken was about 6 hours for one man. This photo shows the full range of adjustment, and the component parts. The shed as it was on Wednesday morning Leaning to the Left. Wedges and a door that has not been lockable for some time Doing the job Levelling Up Correcting the shear, and installing a new brace Job Done. I hope. Will it work? Ask me in a couple of years, when the ground has moved again. Total cost was under £200. A new shed plus a concrete slab would have been about £1000 or a little more done professionally with careful sourcing. The chap doing the work is the excellent John Smith of Little John Property Services (M: 07702 033296), who does a lot of property maintenance for me.

As I'm getting the roof taken off the bungalow next week, I thought that I had best get my site insurance sorted out. When I was ringing around for quotes, every organisation asked whether the build would need piles in the foundations to which I answered in the negative as I had not heard anything to the contrary. HOWEVER, the lack of information in one area doesn't equate to certainty in another so I contacted MBC for some information from their SE as to whether he felt, at this stage, I would need to have piled foundations before going ahead and purchasing insurance. The SE, via MBC, got back very quickly indeed. This is the plan of our site with the existing and new structures superimposed, as well as where hedges and trees have been. The handwritten comments are self explanatory, but the orange areas are where the excavation needs to go much deeper than usual, probably about 1200mm, then back-filled with hardcore. Zarucki Fill_Excavation Depths.pdf So, to dig deep or to go for piles? The SE has said that both will work and the deciding factor is which is cheapest. In the sums I will need to do next week, I will also need to account for the cost of getting any piling system designed as MBC don't do this, then also getting the piles, foundation and super structure all connected up; please excuse the lack of technical terms. At the moment, I have no idea of what piling system would be needed, but if it's anything like @recoveringacademic experience, then it could be a process that requires a piling mat meaning I'll have almost formed the MBC foundation anyway. For those who want to read about Ian's experience, his excellent blog account of piles is here: Recovering academic's pile blog Of particular note is @Calvinmiddle's comment about his deeper foundation on clay for an MBC build. At the moment, I'm heavily leaning towards the deeper foundation and no piles. I will check out the economics of it; if it's a close thing, I would prefer to avoid piling just because I feel more comfortable with the principles involved in the deeper hard core layer and it avoids involving yet another contractor. But who knows - until 10.00am this morning, I had no idea what a piling mat was and a week is a long time in self-building.