shed damp proof

[spx]

Hi Guys I've just finished building a new shed and as the winters here I was going to wait until spring before I get it rendered. (it's made from blocks)

The only thing is the wall are constantly wet with the rain and I'm afraid my tools will rust, would it be ok to just paint it until the spring ? Will this stop the damp and will it still be able to be rendered.

Aditionally My floor is a bit wobbly any advise on laying a final screed, method and thickness advice please, thanks.

 

[Julio]

The problem with painting it, is that this will create a barrier between the blockwork and the render.
As for the floor, you could use a levelling compound. Alternatively you could screed the floor, I would go no less than 25mm, although this is a bit thin. 50 mm would do the job fine.

Sounds like a posh shed

 

[BruisedThumb]

<Sounds like a posh shed >

What's wrong with a posh shed? Good thing IMHO, especially if you're going to spend much time there.

Mine has got double glazing and my neighbour claimed that his has got carpet.

Cold feet distract from accurate measurements and don't help safety much either. As spx wrote, damp doesn't do the tools any good.

Mind you, on a dark rainy winter's evening, en-suite facilities might save many an uncomfortable walk back up the garden to the house.

 

[taper]

I want one of those how big is your shed I want to build one to about 20 foot by 10 foot with a pitched roof how deep was your foundations and what type of block did you use .....oh and how much did it cost thanks Steve

 

[BruisedThumb]

Hi there, Taper,

My shed is actually a 12' by 8' wooden sectional building with added insulation and a lining of 6" by 1" planed boards. It has two large double-glazed aluminium-framed windows in the front; these were salvaged from a job when a friend of mine was replacing them with uPVC windows.

The shed originally stood on a raft of second-hand scaffold boards on five railway sleepers on a ballast/lime mix.

When I moved to my present location, I decided to go for a concrete base. The site had previously been a compost heap and before that a pigeon loft so the first step was to remove quite a lot of soft soil to level the site. That now forms a mound on the other side of the garden path, supported by a stack of four of the railway sleepers Then we dug a trench round the outline of the base, going down until we were in undisturbed non-vegetable soil; this was deeper in some places than in others. Then we laid a concrete strip footing, minimum 200 mm deep, and a friend laid two courses of 18" by 9" by 4_1/2" dense concrete blocks. I fitted two separate plastic ducts through the concrete block wall and up to FFL ready for power and intercom cables.

Next we excavated the soil from inside the concrete block wall and refilled with well-rammed hardcore blinded with sand, topped with a polythene membrane and 150 mm of concrete with a sheet of steel mesh. The membrane comes up the inside of the concrete blocks and over their tops and the wooden base of the shed sits on top of that.

The top of the concrete base is about 100 mm above the surrounding ground level.

Not the way everyone would do it and I'd prefer a concrete block shed but sometimes you have to go with what you've got!