Monday, July 1, 2013

Considerations when building a lean to shed

By Andrew Briggs


Choosing the location of your new lean to shed is fairly often the easiest choice. This is due to the fact that so many lean to sheds are constructed attached to a home or barn. Obviously the barn or home determines where the lean to will be constructed. That said, there are many things you need to consider when you are considering constructing a lean to shed.

But in the case of free-standing lean to sheds in backyards or on country properties, the choice of location and orientation (direction) of the building is important. Even when lean to sheds are used for school bus stops or road-side fruit stands careful selection of the site is wise. Lean to shed plans often ignore this factor although the plans are helpful in preparation of different kinds of foundations. But since these structures are meant to be simple, when building lean to sheds one would want to minimize the amount of earth removal or excavation as much as possible.

Lean to sheds are often built on low ground, on the ground itself. For that reason you should put some thought into how to handle rain water. Depending on the location you may or man not want to install a simple rain gutter to keep H2O away from your shed.

When choosing a location for your free-standing lean to shed, trees can be your best friend or worst enemy. If your lean to is intended to be permanent you will want to do what you can to make the temperature as pleasant as possible. If you live in a warm climate you might want to place your lean to near a tree which will provide much needed shade in the summer. Assuming you don't choose an evergreen tree that same tree will shed its leaves and allow needed sunlight during the winter.

The open end of your lean-to provides access to the elements and based on what your intentions are for lean to you can choose to place that end towards or away from the sun and or wind. You can choose to have morning or evening sun facing your open end. Wind is difficult to predict but often you can determine the most common wind direction and make you choice based on that.

Finally, remember that you can choose to add windows and doors to a lean to shed. If you are interested in this, consult some good lean to shed plans. These plans are usually quite helpful although, as I have pointed out in this article, they often omit to point out how vital a good location and orientation is.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment