Hit the 300 pound mark in my shed and realized I need better shelving

So I finally added up all the weight I've got crammed into my 8x10 backyard shed. I got curious after adding a third set of metal shelving units from Lowe's last weekend. I just grabbed a scale and started weighing bins and boxes. Ended up at 312 pounds total, which surprised me because the shed itself is just sitting on a gravel base with some pavers. I never really thought about the ground shifting under all that weight over time. Now I'm wondering if I should pour a small concrete pad or just spread the load out better with some plywood underneath. Has anyone else had their floor start to sag or settle after piling up too much stuff?

3 comments

3 Comments

alice9282d ago

Alright but three hundred pounds spread across a whole shed floor... that's like two heavy people standing around in there. Seems like gravel and pavers would handle that fine unless you're parking a car on top of it.

jenny1982d ago

Jumping in because I think @alice928 is missing something about moisture wicking through the gravel over time. Three hundred pounds might be fine for the weight itself but if you get heavy rain and the ground underneath shifts or holds water, that gravel can settle uneven and make your floors buckle. I've seen it happen in a buddy's shed where he just threw down pavers on top of dirt and within a year he had to replace half of them because the soil underneath turned into mud and everything sank.

green.iris1d ago

My brother-in-law did the same thing with his backyard shed back in 2016, and yeah, what @jenny198 said matches what happened to his floor. He put down a few inches of gravel and some concrete pavers, thought he was set. We got a real wet spring that year and the ground under that gravel just turned to soup. The pavers started tilting and cracking within a few months. Did you dig a trench or put any kind of drainage pipe around the base, or did you just lay the gravel right on top of the dirt? Because that's the part that really tells the tale with moisture and settling.