GARDEN ROOM & OFFICE FOUNDATIONS & BASE

All our Garden Buildings have a substantial Galvanised Steel Base Frame, built on solid Steel Pile foundations - they are Built To Last.

A number of our competitors will use a recycled plastic pad/grid system which is simply placed on the ground and filled with loose stone.  Whilst this is a very quick and cheap way to provide a foundation, we would only use this method for light weight 'Shed' type structures which are placed on very firm ground, as we doubt the long-term stability of this approach.

Please Note: A Rubicon Garden Room weighs in excess of 3 Tons (larger ones weigh even more..!), so this method is not suitable for our installations.

By contrast, creating a concrete base is very messy and disruptive to your home environment, requiring considerable ground excavation with mechanical diggers and skips involved.

Most importantly, if a concrete slab is not constructed properly, taking account of ground conditions and types of soil, the effects of nearby trees, and the weight of the structure being erected, a concrete slab will fail and is likely to crack and slump, potentially causing a catastrophic collapse of any building built on it.

Neither is it very eco-friendly way to provide a foundation for your Garden Room, as every tonne of processed cement releases a tonne of carbon into the atmosphere. 

As a preference therefore, we fit concrete and steel pile foundations. This is where we drive steel piles all around the perimeter of the base and across the floor spars to a depth of 500-750mm and fill them with a solid concrete mix.  This uses only around 10% of the concrete employed in a slab construction, whilst providing a firm footing, bonded into the ground, upon which our building can sit with confidence. It acts like a bed of nails, where the structural loads are spread over multiple points, a similar principle to the piles used to support cathedrals in Venice.

Once the concrete has set, our building is supported on adjustable galvanised steel legs attached to the piles, so we can cope with slopes in the ground levels of up to 18" without a problem.

A 150mm galvanised steel frame is then constructed and bolted to the pile leg attachments. Our composite steel insulated base can then be constructed on to the galvanised steel framework.

Please Note: We no longer use wood to construct our bases - it’s all steelwork, one of the reasons why we can offer a 20yr structural guarantee.