Garden house on a metal frame

Recommendation points

• Functions and tasks
• Planning and earthwork
• Foundation laying
• Assembling the frame
• Roof system
• External and internal cladding

It is difficult to imagine the maintenance of a garden with a vegetable garden without outbuildings. offers instructions for the construction of a light garden house on a metal frame, which in summer will be a shelter from the scorching sun, and in winter – a shelter for garden equipment and tools.

Functions and tasks

Quite often, capital outbuildings are erected on a personal plot. For keeping animals or organizing a workshop, such a step is justified, but if you need a place for spending summer leisure, it would be reasonable to erect a light frame building.

The pavilion on a metal frame is ideal as a place for outdoor recreation. Moreover, in winter it can be used as a hangar for a walk-behind tractor and storage of various garden utensils.

The walls of such a building are thin and do not have insulation, which can be partly considered a plus. Due to direct air exchange with the street, even on a hot summer day, the inside will remain cool, while in the cold season, good ventilation will relieve dampness.

Despite the lightness and simplicity of construction, such a building will last a long time and will require a minimum of effort to maintain. The pavilion is divided into two parts: one to a third of the total area with a bulk floor and the other with a boardwalk. In the first, it is planned to organize a technical room, in the second – a recreation area and a place for storing vegetables in winter.

Planning and earthwork

A structure on a metal frame has elastic properties and can tolerate mechanical vibrations harmlessly. Therefore, even on heaving soils, a concrete tape with high deformability will be the best base option..

To provide the foundation with diagonal stiffness, you will need to tie the perimeter with two internal struts. The first is located under the partition that separates the living area from the storage. For example, with a total foundation size of 3×6 m, the spacer divides the long side into segments of 2 and 4 m.The second spacer is installed perpendicular to the first one and divides the household part in two, which will facilitate laying the log and the installation of the boardwalk.

The cross-section of the tape is 25×25 cm, so about 1.6 m will be needed to fill such a foundation³ concrete. This is a volume that you can cook on your own, even without a concrete mixer. First, you need to mark out a trench with stakes and a cord, which should be 10-15 cm wider than the tape on each side. The trench is shallow, about 20 cm, while 5–8 cm in height is occupied not by the tape itself, but by the filling under it.

The bottom of the trench must be carefully planned using a hydrostatic level. In the simplest case, you can take a transparent silicone hose filled with water. In each corner of the foundation and at the edges of the spacers, sticks should be driven in, on which a common horizon is marked. Planning is best done with road gravel, but you can just compact the soil tightly and fill with sand 3–5 cm thick.

Foundation laying

To fill the foundation, you need a form. Since the tape is under little load, it is permissible to carry out pouring in stages with an interval of 2-3 days, moving the formwork. It is only important to pre-tie the reinforcement cage, which consists of 4 rods with a diameter of 8 mm with a periodic profile, assembled in a box with a side of 15 cm using square clamps. The connection at the corners should be done using bent anchors, which are tied to the frame rods with an overlap of 40 cm.

For formwork, frames made of wooden beams, sheathed on one side with any available sheet material, are suitable. The boards should be 25 cm high and installed with their upper edge at the general horizontal level. In the lower part, they are strengthened with stakes driven into the ground, the upper sides are tied together with wooden slats on self-tapping screws.

Correctly pour lightweight concrete tape like this:

1. First, fill the bottom with sand, tamp it and spread plastic wrap throughout the trench.
2. Completely assemble the reinforcement cage, placing it on lining of large stones so that the reinforcement is covered on all sides with a layer of concrete 5 cm thick.
3. Assemble the formwork or part of it by wrapping the film inside the sides.
4. If the pouring is carried out in stages, the concrete should be placed in several passes so that gentle slopes 60–80 cm long are formed at the edges of the poured segment.

Be sure to install seven mortgages at the corners of the foundation and at the centers of intersection of the tape. These can be ordinary reinforcement rods bent at right angles, or pipe sections. Embedded inserts are installed so that their protruding parts are located exactly at the intersection of the tape axes.

Assembling the frame

Further work can be carried out 5-7 days after the foundation is poured; to assemble the frame, concrete does not need to gain full strength. But you need to act carefully, avoiding the fall of weights on the tape, so as not to chip the edges.

The load-bearing base of the walls consists of uprights and four rows of crossbeams. You can use any rolled metal, including welded from pieces. A channel, a corner or a profile pipe with a width of 40 mm and a height of 2.5–3 m is suitable for the racks. It is better to make lintels from materials with flat edges, which will facilitate the fastening of the sheathing.

The easiest way to assemble the frame is to first weld the uprights with the upper and lower crossbars, forming two short walls. The rungs should be welded to the outside of the frame. Short walls are put in place and connected by two long beams, while the distance between the bottom and top of the racks must be the same.

Once the base is assembled, it needs to be reinforced by placing the remaining struts and adding spacers over the foundation lintels. Now you need to align the geometry. To do this, the upper outer corners of the frame should be connected with diagonal ties, after making sure that the lower and upper diagonals are equal. The final rigidity of the frame will be given by two rows of crossbars encircling it along the outer perimeter, as well as diagonal reinforcement inserts, which cross-to-cross connect the bottom and top of adjacent racks.

It is recommended to fasten the lower strapping belt with an indent of 20 cm from the foundation, the upper one – in a single horizontal plane. If the height of the racks has not been verified in advance, they can be cut after the frame is finally assembled. The two middle belts of the harness should divide the height of the rack into equal segments of 60-80 cm.

After assembling the frame, you need to upholster the slag from the welded seams, clean the metal with sandpaper, degrease and thoroughly cover with a primer and then alkyd enamel. Such a metal structure will last for more than a dozen years..

Roof system

The roof of the garden house should be gable with a slope of 30–45 °, which contributes to the independent descent of snow masses. In regions with a large amount of precipitation, an increased snow load can lead to deformation of the wall frame, so they should be reinforced, for example, with additional vertical corners and a powerful crossbar covering the walls around the perimeter.

The roof frame consists of trusses, including two inclined rafter legs, converging over the central partition of the building. From the bottom of the leg, be sure to tighten it and support the ridge with a rafter. Edged boards with a section of 25×120 mm are suitable for the manufacture of trusses, provided that the trusses are installed with a step of at least 1 m.

When assembling trusses, it is necessary to provide a roof overhang on the slopes of at least 40 cm and at least 20 cm above the gables. Legs with puffs can be overlapped with the connection point directly above the wall. Do not use black self-tapping screws for the connection, it is better to take ordinary nails.

Before installing the rafters, you need to fix the crossbars from boards 50x150mm to the edge on the racks of the short walls, placing them on the inside. In places where the rafters rest on the crossbars, the ends of the rafter legs should be cut to a depth of 40–50 mm, forming a stop. The rafters are fastened together with a crate made of unedged board, which is stuffed with an indent of 20-30 mm. All wooden elements of the roof support system should be treated with bioprotective impregnation and, if possible, painted.

External and internal cladding

A profiled sheet is ideal for wall cladding. The molding must be chosen so that the walls can be sewn up without horizontal joints. At the same time, the gables are sewn up separately with an overlap over the walls of about 20 cm.When choosing the length of the sheets for roofing, you must be guided by the condition that the overlap at the joints is not less than 30 cm.

Before covering the walls, you need to form openings for doors and windows. To do this, in the right places, you should cut out the crossbeams and form frames around the perimeter of the openings. For the correct installation of the door from the hinge side, you need to install a massive post made of a steel corner or a profile pipe. The cladding should be positioned at a distance of 15–20 mm from the foundation surface, forming a deformation gap. If the gap needs to be closed, an ordinary roofing ridge should be placed under the bottom edge of the profiled sheet, which is attached to the tape with dowels with a cap.

Before sheathing the roof, it is recommended to install waterproofing on top of the sheathing. Roofing material is suitable, which is rolled out with horizontal sheets, starting from the bottom of the slope with an overlap of 10 cm. The roof is covered with a profiled sheet, which is protected on the ridge by a roofing strip, the ends can be left open.

Inside, the garden house can be left completely unfinished by erecting only a partition separating the pantry from the recreation area. However, if you plan to store vegetables in the shed in winter, it is better to sheathe the room from the inside with a wooden slat and chipboards. Even such a simple lining will be enough to maintain a positive temperature inside due to one small potbelly stove..

The floors in both rooms are very simple. In the technical area, the top layer of soil must be removed and backfilled with gravel or expanded clay. In the household part, the floor is made on logs – bars of 75×75 mm, laid across the foundation lintel, and a flooring of inch boards. To avoid the formation of dampness in the subfield, a gap of about 10-15 mm should be left along the contour, and the soil should be sprinkled with slaked lime.