Help Me Design/ Build a Shop

Doorman63 · 2025-09-18T05:35:59-0400

hayden said:
So it's just the post anchors that are embedded in the slab, and the wood blocks are just to hold everything in position?

Is the slab thickened around the perimeter, and if so how much compared to the center?

Your climate is not too far off from ours with solid freezes in the winter. What sort of prepping of the soil bed did you do?

Wood blocks just hold the brackets till they set the posts-correct.
The brackets the builder has made.

I don’t remember how thick honestly. The brackets had approx 8-10” of rebar bent in a “J”. The slab is 6” thick. 2 pieces of rebar around the perimeter.

All soil removed down to clay and some more brought in to level the slab. Clay was on-site. This pic is where the clay came from. A creek crossing that was approx 6’ wide and pretty steep. Now it’s approx 20’ wide and much shallower. Not much topsoil in this spot of our property.

aircommuter · 2025-09-18T09:44:11-0400

BigBlue1 said:
That's not true about the boom pumper truck. When we bought our property in 2016 it already had a 50x105 pole barn built. It had a gravel floor. I had a concrete floor poured in half the shed that year. They used a pump truck just fine to boom the concrete 50+ feet back, just by going through the main front 14x14 door. And that was with an 8' apron pre-formed in front of that door.

When I was doing buildings full time I had many that I could only access from one end due to terrain. Some at 100’. You can’t do that very well through a door. So like I said variables. You can use a pump with a long hose but two issues are one having to use a smaller rock in the mix and dragging the hose around with rebar and other obstacles. The more you do the more you learn. Hopefully.

BigBlue1 · 2025-09-18T11:54:34-0400

aircommuter said:
When I was doing buildings full time I had many that I could only access from one end due to terrain. Some at 100’. You can’t do that very well through a door. So like I said variables. You can use a pump with a long hose but two issues are one having to use a smaller rock in the mix and dragging the hose around with rebar and other obstacles. The more you do the more you learn. Hopefully.

That makes sense. Certainly there are situations that would be challenges. I figured that most folks here aren't talking about buildings as large as mine and 50' reach would suffice for most. 100' buildings with full concrete floors are really normally beyond most non-commercial use cases, in my experience.

aircommuter · 2025-09-18T11:59:10-0400

BigBlue1 said:
That makes sense. Certainly there are situations that would be challenges. I figured that most folks here aren't talking about buildings as large as mine and 50' reach would suffice for most. 100' buildings with full concrete floors are really normally beyond most non-commercial use cases, in my experience.

My personal home shop is 130’ 23’ high. The contractor gave me a deal. Free labor.