Placing a shed on sloped ground using railway sleepers

Hi Kirstie, Its not an ideal situation but I understand you need to save pennies. Similalry it depends how you want to build your shed? You could try laying your floor bearers perpendicular to the sleepers and packing them level as you go (you can buy plastic window packers at most merchants or online). Once your bearers are level the floor and sides should all follow suit. Again, it's not ideal so make sure you spend plenty of time packing and levelling before you erect; even the slightest margin of error can make the doors and roof a nightmare. Hope this helps, All the best Dan P.s. sounds like you have a brick-paved drive (bricks are called paviors in the trade) 😀.

Hi Kirstie, You will need to lay your sleepers running the same way as the slope of your driveway, ensuring water runs away between them. Buy treated timber firrings (builders merchants) and fix these to the top of your sleepers, prior to constructing you shed. You can work out the size firrings you need by simply using packers and a spirit level. Start at the highest point your shed will sit (point zero) and then mark the floor where your shed comes to. Starting from point zero, make your way to the opposite end of the shed by placing packers under the spirit level and keeping the bubble in the middle. When you get to the opposite end you can then count how many packers there are. If you end up with say 5 x 5mm packers at the lowest point then that would be 25mm, so that would determine what size firrings you need. 0-25 is your overall angle, and then you need to add the length of the shed. So, let's say your shed is 3000mm in length your total firring required would be 0-25x3000mm. I hope that makes sense? Timber firrings will provide a much stronger support for the floor bearers. If your shed is a regular quadrilateral shape you don't need the bearers to sit perpendicular if you use the firrings, and they would be supported through their entire length giving much greater support. If I was installing this for a client I would also lay DPM to the block paviors prior to laying the sleepers, and wrap it up all sides of the sleepers to. This would protect the sleepers from water absorption from the paviors and at the same time stop any tanning from the sleepers staining the paviors. Lastly, make sure your shed sits at least 30mm over the edge of the sleepers, allowing for water run off when raining. The last thing you want is for water to sit on the sleepers and slowly tack into the timber bearers, slowly rotting out the floor of your shed. Good luck with it all. Many thanks, James

It depends to some extent on the slope of the driveway. This then leads to three basic ways to deal with your problem: 1. Build up the lower end of the slope. 2. Lower the higher end of the slope. 3. Go for somewhere in between. If the slope is only slight, then you can use some wood to raise the lower end or remove some of the bricks, or both. The more severe the slope, the more you need to do... If it is bad enough, you could end up needing stilts or a digger. If you can give us an idea of the amount of slope that you have, I am sure that one of us will be able to help you with more accurate advice...