How to build a barn with your own hands

Recommendation points

• Choosing a place to build a barn
• Shed base and floor
• What to build walls from
• Windows and doors
• Overlap, roof
• How to furnish a barn from the inside

Even if the entire area around the house is planted with lawn, you still need to store your lawn mower somewhere. Even the most trivial materials are suitable for building a barn, and in time the whole process will take a week at most, and your household equipment will be orderly and reliably protected from adverse outdoor conditions.

Choosing a place to build a barn

It is unlikely that anyone wants to put the utility rooms in the most prominent place. On the contrary, the most profitable part of the plot for building a barn is the economic part, that is, the one that is separated by the house from the driveway..

First of all, consider the option of an attached room. This will reduce the consumption of materials, and the loss of useful space in the local area will be minimal. In addition, it is very easy to supply electricity to such a barn..

The extension should not be located closer than 1.5–2 m to window openings, so as not to worsen the insolation of residential premises. It is optimal if the barn is not located at the very corner, so as not to complicate the route around the house. Of the most suitable places for building a shed, naturally shaded areas can also be distinguished, where it will not be possible to place a normal flower garden or flower bed. A good solution would be to separate a part of the local area from the direction of the prevailing wind with the help of a shed, so that later you can build a canopy on the leeward side for outdoor storage.

If there is no opportunity to attach a barn to the house, a detached building should be located in the least useful place for economic activity, for example, at the fence of the site. At the same time, keep in mind that it is very important to provide free access to the shed and be able to lay and improve the path. Light semi-capital buildings can be located even in the immediate vicinity of drain pits or cellars, but not above them.

Shed base and floor

It is quite difficult to define the limit of the size and quality of the building at which the barn turns into a change house or a medium-sized workshop. It is believed that to store garden tools, several bicycles and all kinds of accessories, a building with an area of ​​4-5 m is enough². However, everyone has different appetites, including the degree of isolation from the street..

For lightweight frame buildings, it is not necessary to arrange a capital foundation. There will be enough MZLF on a properly constructed cushion of sand and gravel. If it is planned to lay out stone walls with a load on the base of more than 300 kg / m., The tape should be made normally buried with correctly distributed reinforcement..

The need for a belt surrounding the shed around the perimeter is dictated by the requirement to arrange a dry floor inside. The tape provides isolation of the soil inside from surface water, respectively, in the shed it will be possible to store materials and tools for which high humidity is destructive. At the same time, it becomes much easier to arrange a floor, regardless of its type: from clay with a gravel embankment to a more capital one made of paved bricks or concrete screed..

The width of the foundation should allow the walls to be placed on it at their actual thickness, and so that projections of 50–70 and 100 mm remain on the outside and inside, respectively. They are necessary for the correct arrangement of the abutment of the basement ebb and the ability to arrange a frame wooden floor on the ground inside. If it is planned to build on a metal frame, its rack elements are concreted first, and only after that, a connecting belt is poured, raised above the ground by 150-200 mm.

Shed foundation scheme: 1 – shallow strip foundation with simple reinforcement; 2 – lags; 3 – gravel bedding; 4 – sand pillow

To reduce the effect of heaving of the soil on the base of the shed, the trench under the belt is dug a little deeper and partially filled with compacted sand and gravel mixture. It will be better if the bottom layer of the backfill is made with gravel of fraction 20–30 mm, and a layer of sand up to 5 cm is poured on top. In this case, the walls of the trench must be cut in advance so that the crumbling soil does not fall under the concrete. The formwork of the underground part is the trench itself, and the aboveground part is a box of two planks per edge, knocked down at the top by jumpers every 50-60 cm, and at the bottom, tied with wire. Due to the small size of the tape, it is recommended to put an insulating film inside before installing the reinforcement, which will limit the exit of cement laitance from concrete.

What to build walls from

They insulate the barn at will, but protection from blowing is strictly required. In view of this, three options for wall arrangement can be considered: masonry and on a metal or wooden frame. The latter option is best suited for those cases when additional heating is planned in the shed. It is also possible to heat a brick or cinder block building, but usually these materials are preferred because of the possibility of arranging massive shelves that can withstand a significant weight of the stored materials.

For simple protection from wind and precipitation, a metal frame sheathed with a profiled sheet is ideal. Two rows of jumpers should be added between the vertical posts, which are located 10-15 cm from the foundation and at the same distance from the upper edge of the sheet. The gap between the extreme crossbars is divided by additional jumpers so that their step does not exceed 80-100 cm.

The frame of the front and rear walls of the barn: 1 – the back wall of the barn (it is better to use double boards or a bar of greater thickness to strengthen the wall, taking into account the additional load from the shelves and racks); 2 – the front wall of the shed; 3 – doorway

Wooden frame walls are assembled in the form of a frame of planks on an edge, filled with vertical posts every 5-60 cm. The pitch is chosen so that the width of the sheets for sheathing is a multiple of the center-to-center distance of the posts: for plywood it is 50 cm, for OSB – 60 or 40 cm , for profiled sheet – 3-4 times the step of the wave, on average 45-50 cm. The assembled frames are raised to a vertical position, connected to each other and attached to the foundation with anchor bolts with a waterproofing lining.

Windows and doors

It is very useful to provide natural light in the barn, therefore, in addition to the doorway, it is advisable to equip one or more window frames. It is not necessary to arrange full glazing, small loopholes under the ceiling will be enough. It is recommended to place them on the south or east side..

In frame buildings, the windows are formed by horizontal beams. It does not make much sense to combine the spaces between the racks into one wide opening; for a shed, it would be more correct to equip several small, but windows distributed around the perimeter. In a wooden frame, ready-made openings can have double glazing due to the sufficient width of the boards; in a metal frame, it is usually possible to install a frame with only one glass, fixed in a wooden lining. And there is no particular point in fighting for high-quality glazing, because most metal sheds are not insulated.

General view of the shed frame with sheathing with sheet material, for example, OSB

It is a little more difficult to make openings in stone walls. In addition to the fact that the undercut of extensions is required to form vertical edges, two more important requirements should be provided. The top of the opening is covered with a wooden board, the thickness of which is approximately 1/20 of the width of the window, walled into the walls for 1/5 of the length from each edge. The second requirement is to install, instead of brick additions, at least four embedded wooden bars for fastening the window frame.

Overlap, roof

Since the width of the shed rarely exceeds 5–6 m, it makes no sense to arrange a rafter system: a pitched roof will be more than enough, its slope should be at least 15 °, that is, approximately 1: 5 or more steep.

To provide the desired slope, one of the longitudinal walls must be higher than the other, while the side walls are laid out or hemmed under the oblique slope. It is easiest to cover the attached sheds: a wooden rail is attached to the main wall, which sets the desired slope, sometimes it is propped up with several racks if the fixation to the wall is not reliable enough.

In the case of a free-standing barn, a Mauerlat device is required on both sides. For it, you can use bars up to 100×100 mm, which are rigidly fixed to the supporting structure of the walls. For frame buildings, it is possible to recommend immediately using a more powerful upper tie bar, for a metal frame it can be a channel or a profile pipe of a higher section.

Planks are attached to the Mauerlat with ribs, forming a roofing subsystem. Their width for a span of up to 3.5 m should be at least 150 mm, spans up to 6 meters are covered with 200 mm boards, in both cases the recommended thickness is 40–50 mm. The step of installing the beams must correspond to the load on the roof, including the snow one. As a rule, it is sufficient that the beam can support an adult without significant deflection. The beams should protrude 25–40 cm beyond the Mauerlat on both sides; for a secure fit, undercuts are made in them no more than 1/3 of the width.

If the slope of the roof beams is 35 ° or more, the roof can be made of planks. Wide boards (from 200 mm) are laid on top of each other in a “herringbone” pattern with an overlap of at least 50 mm. In this case, the covered edge of each bottom board must be hydrophobized, for example, with bitumen melted in diesel fuel, or used engine oil. Outside, the surface of the boards is exposed with 2-3 layers of alkyd enamel.

1 – rafters; 2 – continuous sheathing with sheet material before laying the roofing material

A more reliable roof can be arranged if the crate is stuffed onto the beams. It can be both OSB sheets and ordinary wooden slats, located in increments of 40-50 cm. Unlike a wooden roof, this can be safely insulated, so it may be necessary to fill waterproofing under the crate. Insulated roofs are arranged from the bottom up – first, vapor barrier and ceiling filing, then insulation, waterproofing and lathing bars, painted with alkyd enamel.

How to furnish a barn from the inside

Do not forget that some of the details necessary for the interior arrangement can be foreseen even at the construction stage. For example, if you make every 2-3 frame posts with triangular brackets at the same height, you will get ready-made supports for the shelves. In any case, do not forget to lay the wiring in time for lighting and one or two outlets.

The furnishings in the shed should correspond to the type of things that will be stored in it: for bicycles, these are pairs of long crutches driven into the walls, for tools – shelves and single-row racks that are easy to use as a work surface. For household utensils and garden tools, you can set aside a separate corner, in which a fence about 40-50 cm high knocks out of the board boards. For storing materials with large moldings, you can knock several horizontal slats to the rafters, turning the ceiling into one large shelf.

Old worn-out furniture will find its place in the barn, which can be easily adapted for storing food, preserving and harvesting, slightly strengthening the shelves. If you need to store fruits or vegetables in winter, do not be lazy to equip a warm corner: a low fence with a hinged lid, insulated with 100 mm PSB plates, will be quite enough.