Building Pole Shed on Slope

[Chris611]

I would like to build a 40 x 60 pole building. The problem is I don't have any flat land where I would like to put it. The land slopes towards a ravine. In the 40 feet, it drops approximately 6 feet. What are my options for dealing with the slope? Can I build up or should I put in a foundation and build the building on a foundation? Not sure what to do. Just wonderd what others have done or seen. Any help would be great.

Thanks
Chris

 

[EddieWalker]

You have three ways to build up the ground.

If you have lots of room, you can build it up with dirt in layers and comact it. This takes allot of room because you need it to slope away from your building with a certain degree of slope. The angle of the slope has allot to do with the type of material you have. Heavy clay can easily give you the amount of lift you want with the maximum amount of slope, while sand will need allot more gently slope.

At six feet, your too high for guessing and do it yourselfer advice on specifics, but you can build a retaining wall. Again, there are allot of variable here that start with the type of soil you have, weather conditions and what you will use for the wall.

Your third option is a combination of the two. Build up the pad as high as you can with dirt, then add the retaining wall to make up the difference.

Eddie

 

[Chris611]

Thanks Eddie. This helps out. I plan to get a contractor out to look at the site and see what he says. I just wanted to have an idea of what he might suggest and any questions to ask. Where I am at in Central Iowa, the soil is very high in clay. I will have to see what the local contractors have to say.


Thanks
Chris

 

[Paddy]

Chris611,

Eddy has good points. consider this; get a dozer in and level the site. The high side cut will need at least a 45 deg slope to make it stable. leave room to drive all around the building. You and the builder will be glad yoy did. You can rip-rap the hill if you want. On steep slopes I throw on winter wheet or something close to hold the earth back.

 

[PineRidge]

If I had my choice digging into the slope for a level base would keep the ground solid for construction. That's what we did to construct our pole barn.

 

[rswyan]

The land slopes towards a ravine. In the 40 feet, it drops approximately 6 feet. What are my options for dealing with the slope? Can I build up or should I put in a foundation and build the building on a foundation? Not sure what to do. Just wonderd what others have done or seen.

Great advice so far.

That's pretty much what we had to deal with here - the site where I wanted to put the polebarn was in the woods and it sloped to a gully in the center of the parcel, which was draining a fairly big area (my guess would be probably 4 or 5 acres at least) Image No. 958 shows the area after most of the stumps were removed before being graded. Overall, there was probably a 10' difference in elevation from the northeast corner (+5') of the pad to the southwest corner (-5') - we used the clay spoil from the northeast to fill the southwest and level out the rest of the pad.

And we still carted off I don't know how many 1 ton dumptruck loads of topsoil. Image No. 999 is just after we started removing the topsoil.

If you look at Image No. 1046 you can see how it ultimately wound up - in the right and rear of the photo we dug into the hillside probably 4' or 5'. The front and left of the image is filled in to a depth of 5'.

This was done on and off with a variety of equipment over a period of maybe a month or so. TBN'ers Pineridge & JASTN70D graciously came over and contributed their tractors, boxblades and time and my neighbor and grandson brought over a JD 310 TLB and a 763 Bobcat. It was amazing how much dirt there was to be moved. The spoil material was spread out in small lifts and compacted just by driving all the equipment over it.

Image No. 1077 shows the framing up and Image No. 1108 shows the completed product.

I still have to handle the overall drainage for the area. This will entail finishing the french drains around the building, final grading on the cut into the bank, and some upslope grading to redirct runoff away from the site. Once I get that done I'll finish leveling and compacting the gravel inside the barn and pour a floor .... finally !

 

[scesnick]

I had the same problem but i had plenty of time to build it. So, I got out my trusty 580 Case Backhoe and started digging out the hill. I sloped the high side wall a bit and made sure I had a good drainage system on the high side.
I didn't take too long to dig out and I am mcuh happier with it than if i would have built up the ground and compacted it.

I use this as my garage so building it up wasn't really an option though.

 

[junkman104]

Here is what I had to start with. Yall had it easy.

 

[rswyan]

Here is what I had to start with. Yall had it easy.

Yeah, but YOU had the nicer toys to play with.