878 replies to this topic

[Shtstr]

Hi to all,
I'm buliding an 7m x 8m shed, not my first shed, after building a new house.
My question is what would you change,include or did you forget to do or allow for in your sheds.
Sorry if this has been discussed, I'm a newbie here.
Cheers.

Fabrication room to contain mess. Clean room for building engines or other parts. And make sure you have 3m to the gutters.
This way you can put in a car hoist that lifts to 1800mm and still clear the roof. Make sure you put the footings in the slab and use 32mpa concreate.

[LXCHEV]

Build it 4 times the size!!!

[claysummers]

15amp circuit and plenty of outlets.

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[Ice]

3 phase power a must

[LJ RB30]

all of the above & insulation at least under the roof.

I'm happy the difference my insulation make 

[claysummers]

I lined the walls and roof with sisalation laid straight under the galv and screwed down. Easy.

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Edited by claysummers, 24 September 2020 - 01:51 PM.

[Rockoz]

If you only have single phase make sure you run 16mm2 cable to the shed.

Put in a couple of 25mm minimum conduits for stuff like data and security.

Dont waste money on hi bay lights. You need to be over 5m for them to do what they are supossed to do.

 

Cheers

 

Rob

[Bigfella237]

I'd never build another shed without a throne-room! (Too many close calls, plus it's handy when you've got a workshop manual to read or something you're trying to figure out.    )

 

Plus, having a basin to wash your hands before you go back inside the house or drive the car is a huge plus, hot water optional but in a cold climate it might be worth it, maybe a little instant heater or similar.

 

As per Rob's suggestion above, depending on your tech needs of course, I'd be running at least one data cable and a phone cable, even if you don't use them at first. Cable is reasonably cheap and really difficult to add later, and allows you to add IP cameras, an alarm system or monitored smoke detectors (for storage areas and the like, not where welding / cutting / etc. is done).

 

I'd use at least Cat 6 data cable and absolutely insist on shielded cable if it's going in the same trench as electricity!

[jpxu1]

There's no such thing as a shed that is big enough, so make yours as big as you can.

 

3mtr high walls at the gutters at least, but 3.6mts is better (you won't have to worry about forgetting and leaving the bonnet up on a car on the hoist). If you go the higher walls, get matching higher roller doors too. I only did on one, then along came a ski boat and I've got to do another :-(

 

Fibreglass skylights are BAD news: they let in unbelievable amounts of heat and UV radiation that will fade stuff like you'd never believe. (And I'm close enough to Melb too like you, not up North in real heat). I had 6 put in, 4 removed again when the roof was lifted (left the 2 over the hoist), but recently did some homework and found polycarbonate roofing (got it through Bunnings) that lets in most of the light (certainly enough), and cuts out most of the heat and UV rays. Swapped them over and BRILLIANT! Recommend you go down that path.

 

Forget about a window, just makes it easier for the crooks.

 

LED twin fluros for light; instantly bright and consume stuff all power.

 

Make your concreter put a small step down in the slab/floor close around the back of where the roller doors and access door will be. They don't like doing it, so you will have to insist. It is the ONLY way to limit water blow under and keep the floor dry.

And nearly forgot, a good 5"s of concrete where the hoist will go, even if you think your not doing a hoist - you will later on!

 

Think about where you will need 15amp power when it comes time to do the wiring. Stuff like the hoist, decent compressor, welders, air con, maybe a lathe? all require 15amp circuits.

 

A laundry basin is really handy, but they take up precious room. I didn't put one in my shed because the previous house owner had installed one on the back of the house running off the water tank and it's nice and close to the shed. A better option in my opinion.

 

That should give you some ideas for thought.

 

Cheers and good luck with it. 

 

JPXU1

Edited by jpxu1, 24 September 2020 - 10:36 PM.

[Ice]

Smoke detectors is a must
had a fire in my shed in 2005 nearly lost a car

[Rockoz]

A step for the roller door is a good idea.

Many years ago we had about 7 of our RFS sheds broken into.

 

They did it very easily and would have been relatively quiet as well.

All they did was slide an L shaped hook under the door on its flat, turn it 90 degrees then pull it with a car.

All of the doors bent easily in the middle letting them get in easily.

A step on the inside of the door will prevent that trick from working.

 

Cheers

 

Rob

[arrimar]

I'd cast bollard sleeves into the slab if I built a big shed.

[jpxu1]

Also, plastic film under the concrete, whether you build on a slab or put a floor in afterwards to stop rising damp.

[Rockoz]

Some of you may have noticed from other posts that I am getting a shed built.

Its been a bit of a process spanning about 8 months so far.

Council being a major hold up as seems to be a common thing.

 

After renting for so long and moving at inconvenient times I decided it was time to buy a house.

Well actually my brother had a lot to do with it. Along with his wife. 

I wanted to rent the family home that is being rented out as dad wont ever be back in it.

He decided that renting to strangers was a better option than renting to family.

It would have been ideal as I would have been back in the town I spent most of my life in.

But thats another story.

 

So I found a decent block of dirt. A bit over 3000 sq m.

A 2 bedroom house on it. Very old but sound.

And some crappy sheds. A 2 car garage and workshop that I really dont know how it is still standing.

Roof leaks and water comes in from ground level.

 

So I needed a new shed.

This is the block of land.

 

 asboughtsm.jpg   69.22K   8 downloads

 

I toyed with the size and location for a while.

Originally I was going to put it across the block instead of down the side.

The location and easement of a sewer line made that a bit of a problem.

It would have sterilised the back of the block a bit too.

A large part of the yard out of sight didnt seem to be right.

So in the end it went down the fenceline.

 

 siteplansm.jpg   123.06K   9 downloads

 

I got my basic laser level out and worked out there was about a metre of fall over the length of the shed.

There were also about 8 trees that were in the way of the shed.

As well as an old what I thought may have been a septic tank and absorption trench under where it was to go.

Part of the trench is in this pic.

Once we uncovered it all, pumped out the stagnant water and worked out what was going on, it turns out it wasnt ever connected to anything. The pipes leading in to the tank were like new, and none of the rainwater pipes that were probably intended to go to it managed to get close enough to it.

 

 diggersm.jpg   342.37K   8 downloads

 

I bought the digger knowing it would get a bit of use.

 

I cut the trees down and piled them up thinking about a bonfire next year.

But the pile kept getting bigger and bigger.

The trees were fairly substantial.

 

 treepilesm.jpg   332.4K   8 downloads

 

The digger turned out to not be up to the job of ripping the stumps out.

So the concretors put me on to a bloke with a bobcat and 5 tonne excavator.

Took him a day to get all 7 tree roots out.

 

Once the roots were gone he got on to the job of levelling the ground for the slab.

We had a huge downpour a couple of days before he turned up, and the trench I had dug for the conduits wasnt filled in and a river flowed down to part of where the slab was going.

Being clay, it got soft, and he had to remove a heap of it to get some decent ground to work with.

 

This is around the first of about 24 truck loads of fill that came in for the job.

400 tonnes in all.

Overburden from a local granite quarry.

 

 fillsm.jpg   375.56K   7 downloads

 

After 5 days of filling and levelling, the concretors managed to come in and get their job done.

The slab has some same day concrete sealer on it.

They didnt do a particularly great job with it.

Too many large bubbles that didnt burst and lay down properly.

But it was a good base for me to seal it again with colour later.

 

 slabdonesm.jpg   249.39K   11 downloads

 

More to come after I do some resizing.

 

Cheers

 

Rob

[LXCHEV]

Fantastic update, great work!

[claysummers]

That looks about 4 times the size of my shed, which is 6x12m. Cost me $16000 15 years ago so I’m not surprised at the cost if it includes wiring etc. You won’t know yourself when you get in there. I think they came in under gunned on the earthmoving. D8 would have done it in a day, balance cut and fill.


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[Ice]

I would be ponding that slab straight away 

[RallyRed]

Excellent.
Nice block of land mate.
Let's just call that "Shed - Stage 1"
lol

[Rockoz]

The digger came in handy for running the conduits.

Have run 2 x 50mm conduits for power and 1 x 50mm conduit that will be used for data security etc.

I looked a t having 3 phase connected to the house.

It is across the road. And there is a pole on my side of the road already.

The cost of 15k just to cross the road, which is a normal suburban roadway, was a bit over the top.

So will be limited to single phase.

Will be running 35mm2 cables from the house to the shed.

Once the shed is up I will put up a 10kW solar array, with the possibility of expanding it to 15kW in the future.

 

 conduitssm.jpg   327.28K   7 downloads

 

Depth of cover is a minimum of 800mm.

Well below the required depth.

 

Will be running sewer and stormwater and a couple of waterlines down the same area in the near future.

My existing sewer is old clay pipes. They need to be replaced.

 

Still planning in my head the electrical layout.

But there will be a main board where the mains come in, and a sub board at the other end of the shed fed by 16mm2 cables.

Toying with the idea of an insulated plant room where the main board is.

Will house the air compressor and any pumps associated with the water tank I will require.

Might even end up with some storage batteries as well.

I shouldnt have any issues with voltage drop.

 

Will be running about half a dozen Cat 6 data cables to the shed.

Internet and likely cameras and alarm.

Looking for some fibre to throw in the conduit as well.

May as well future proof it a little in the beginning.

 

Cheers

 

Rob

[Bigfella237]

For less than $15k you could set yourself up with a proper, silenced, in-cabinet, auto-start, 3-phase diesel generator (to go into your insulated plant room). It only needs to run when you actually need to use 3-phase equipment (which, truth be told, is rarely more than a handful of hours a week) plus it can kick-in automatically and power your entire property in a blackout.

 

Do not run any un-shielded data cable in the same trench as the power, even the shielded stuff I'd still worry about RFI, and don't screw around with old cat 6 cable, I think they're up to cat 8 now.

 

But I wouldn't run twisted-pair data cable at all, optical fibre is the way to go. No RFI, no maximum length limits (within reason), all you need is a switch/hub at each end that has "SFP ports".

 

Same goes for telephone cable, it might be worth throwing some in just for a backup, but most things are done over an ethernet connection these days.

 

Same again for IP cameras (CCTV), once you have a high speed fibre LAN you won't have any problems with a dozen IP cameras around (and in) the shed if the fancy takes you one day.

 

Also, a couple of these are high on my wish-list...

 

[Rockoz]

Ive run data successfully in shared trenches before.

Its just another of the things that I have some training in.

I was on the construction team at a 94 x 1MW generator farm.

The only thing we had decent separation for was the HV to everything else.

But there were still some places where they were in closer proximity.

Heading into transformers and interference was likely an issue in the switchyard too.

Had some wicked induced voltages in the air.

 

I encountered a lot of myths when I was doing networking for a while.

There are some supposed rules in data that really dont pass the acid test in practice.

Some of them have been written purely for convenience, which in itself isnt a bad thing I guess.

 

Havent looked at a security system as yet.

Had good success with POE cameras when I was living down the coast.

Footage was that clear, and my location near the local shops had the cops ask me to provide vision for them a few times.

Have to find a system that will network the way I want it to.

Still some homework to do there.

 

Some of the data cabling might also be used for some zero volt switching for various things about the place.

But the fibre will handle the bulk of the stuff.

 

Cheers

 

Rob

[Bigfella237]

I'm running Hikvision POE IP cameras, all 8MP so equivalent to 4K UHD video, but my system only monitors the feeds in low resolution to free up the network and automatically switches to full resolution when a trigger event occurs. Only thing I'd like with them that I don't have is audio, overseas camera models have a built-in mic but not Aussie stuff. Although I have a sneaking suspicion there's some stupid law against recording audio here?

 

I invested fairly heavily with Synology's "Surveillance Station" NVR/NAS, I think (from memory) my model will handle up to 96 cameras and you can view & control them on a free app from just about any smartphone or smart TV, plus event detection / alerts / back-capture recording / etc. Also, it's handy that it doubles as my Plex media server!

 

I think they even have a number plate recognition option but it was a very expensive add-on if memory serves and would only really be a toy, I can watch the recording if I want to see a number plate.

 

I've recently been playing with "smart home" stuff as well, so you can control anything connected via yet another smartphone app (including lights, door locks, and basically anything else that can be switched on or off or moved electrically).

 

I did a heap of research and a few experiments and found that most smart home hubs only work while they have an internet connection... trouble is, I have a pet hate for these "cloud-based" services. Too many times I've seen the companies go belly-up or decide that it's no longer profitable to maintain the service and all of a sudden your smart home gets dumb real quick!

 

The only hub I could find that works totally offline is called "Hubitat". I've bought two of them already and so far they seem good, although talk about your steep learning curves! None of this stuff is really "bogan-friendly"!!

[Rockoz]

Im a bit against cloud stuff too.

And I would prefer a hard connection to wifi connection any day.

The cameras I had were Hikvision as well.

Used their DVR. And signed up for their remote monitoring.

Was a pretty good system that recorded in HD all the time.

Had 8 cameras and a 4GB hard drive. Got almost a month of saved vision from memory.

Local cops loved it. Especially the clear night time vision of the area across the street near the shops.

 

Once I am settled I will likely look at the heaps of Arduino stuff I bought a while back to set up stuff around the place.

Have been toying with the idea of Cbus or Dynalite as well.

But they are on the pricey side.

Could set up most of what I want with an expandable PLC cheaper I think.

Just add to it as things grow.

 

Cheers

 

Rob

[racean69]

great looking set up Rob.