Pole bldg on grade

[LBrown59]

I was thinking something similar to Larry. Having three feet of exposed beam from the ground the the skirt has the potential to cause problems. PT wood likes to curl on it's own, and this might give it enough room to do so.

If I absolutely had to start construction before the pad was level, than I'd put larger poles in the ground. At least one size bigger than you need. I think you'll need the extra strength.

It sure seems like a much harder way to go about building a barn. Moving the dirt in later and compacting it is gonna be ten times the work and effort having to work around the walls. Compaction will be just about impossible when your trying to get it from both sides of the walls, which means it will continue to settle for years, even decades. No matter what, you'd never be able to pour a solid foundation tha wouldn't crack on you over time.

Anything's possible, but why do it the hard way?
Eddie

It was hard real hard.

 

[bones1]

Now that you guy's almost talked me out of doing it the hard way I found a builder that WILL build on a slope.On the back wall and 3/4 back on the side walls instead of putting the poles on 8' centers he will put them in on 4' centers and they will be 4' longer as well.Extra tongue and groove skirt boards to make up the difference.This will effectively make the back wall of the building wall a retaining wall.I do agree that making the pad level beforehand is the proper way to do this but it would take many weeks/ months to get the fill in here.You see, the only way in to the site is through my yard,to the back of the property and directly over a 1 yr old septic field.Dump trucks are out of the question getting in there.Pickups only and at that I am little nervous going over the septic field.There can be no rain for days before a load and this timing is taking forever.Therein lies my dilemma.

 

[LBrown59]

Now that you guy's almost talked me out of doing it the hard way I found a builder that WILL build on a slope.On the back wall and 3/4 back on the side walls instead of putting the poles on 8' centers he will put them in on 4' centers and they will be 4' longer as well.Extra tongue and groove skirt boards to make up the difference.This will effectively make the back wall of the building wall a retaining wall.I do agree that making the pad level beforehand is the proper way to do this but it would take many weeks/ months to get the fill in here.You see, the only way in to the site is through my yard,to the back of the property and directly over a 1 yr old septic field.Dump trucks are out of the question getting in there.Pickups only and at that I am little nervous going over the septic field.There can be no rain for days before a load and this timing is taking forever.Therein lies my dilemma.

How are you going to get a level floor inside if you build it this way

 

[jwstewar]

How are you going to get a level floor inside if you build it this way

You said that you did it, how did you do yours?

Me, I just hauled fill in with my little NH and kept compacting it with the vibrating compactor I had rented and filled it up to the bottome of the skirt board - which is where we poured the concrete. Actually made it pretty easy, since my skirt board was level, I knew exactly where my fill needed to go.

 

[bones1]

"Me, I just hauled fill in with my little NH and kept compacting it with the vibrating compactor I had rented and filled it up to the bottome of the skirt board - which is where we poured the concrete. Actually made it pretty easy, since my skirt board was level, I knew exactly where my fill needed to go".
I suppose I could do it this way as well.I'm still open to suggestions.

 

[LBrown59]

1*You said that you did it, how did you do yours?

Me, I just hauled fill in with my little NH and kept compacting it with the vibrating compactor I had rented and filled it up to the bottome of the skirt board - which is where we poured the concrete. Actually made it pretty easy, since my skirt board was level, I knew exactly where my fill needed to go.

Me and a buddy did the inside of my 30 x 52 building using My old 850 Bolens and a small home made yard trailer .

We set six 5 gallon buckets on the trailer and shoveled them full from the dirt pile then hauled them to the building and dumped the buckets inside the building then used the dirt blade on the Bolens to spread it out.
I found out long ago the 5 gallon buckets was easier and quicker than just shoveling the dirt onto the trailer then having to shovel it back off.
Let me tell you it took a lot of trips and 5 gallon buckets to do a 30 x 52 floor and was time consuming hard work.
Before we could do the floor we had to install the bottom skirt boards which was a real PITA that took us 2 weeks of hard labor. Due to the building not being high enough on a properly prepared site we had to do a lot of digging down to get the boards to fit. We also had to bust out concrete around some of the poles as there wasn't enough clearance to accommodate the skirting. The real frustrating time eating job was having to use a small cut off wheel on a drill to cut off dozens and dozens of nails that were in the way of the bottom boards.

On the out side I wound up having the garage so low that I couldn't slope the yard away from the building.
To fix that I had to have a dozer come in and create swails on each end of the building and slope the back down to a ditch. This caused me to have to hire a BH to dig the ditch out twice as deep as it was so the water would drain of the slope into the ditch and to have room for the drains for the gutters and down spouts.
All this grief work and expense could have been prevented had I just built the building on a properly prepared site.

I haven't done the 22x 76 building yet as I am in no hurry to get back into the same headaches with it.