I love the detail in your garage building pages.

We hired a local post hole driller who had a huge auger mounted to his tractor. Once you have accomplished your rough grading bring in about 4" of crushed rock and vibrate it into place over the area 2' in every direction past your overall garage foundation footprint.

Then square-up one corner with a tape measure using the 3:4:5 rule. There has been very little movement in the structure; it appears that ice-lensing was not a problem for our deck / stage posts. You can either build two separate batter boards on each corner like in the photos or a three cornered/two sided one like in the video. The builder’s transit level, as shown in Figure 4, is used in conjunction with the batter boards to establish the correct elevations of the foundation wall at all building corners. Garagetips-101 solved my problem! We first put out batter boards - stakes and horizontal wood strips - to mark the locations of the corners of the stage (not shown in this photo).We started by locating the front of the stage, picking one corner as the "home base" from which ALL other measurements are taken.
I could use some drawings of the batter boards and strings layout for my deck project. (Remember not to move the string on the reference wall.) Attach the string for the reference wall first, placing it exactly where you want the wall to be. The height can be adjusted by pounding the stakes further into the ground. Key is to locate the stake-and-batter-boards a few feet outside the actual desired post locations of the deck or stage corners. Transfer the building lines to the batterboards by dangling a plumb bob over the outer edge of each corner stake while stretching a length of line between batter boards. Adjust again as needed. Set up batter boards and mason line to mark these points. Bring the board forward. At that point we drilled holes for the remaining posts. endstream endobj 20 0 obj<> endobj 21 0 obj<> endobj 22 0 obj<>/ColorSpace<>/Font<>/ProcSet[/PDF/Text/ImageC/ImageI]/ExtGState<>>> endobj 23 0 obj<> endobj 24 0 obj<> endobj 25 0 obj[/ICCBased 38 0 R] endobj 26 0 obj[/Indexed 25 0 R 255 39 0 R] endobj 27 0 obj[/Indexed 25 0 R 255 41 0 R] endobj 28 0 obj[/Indexed 25 0 R 255 43 0 R] endobj 29 0 obj[/Indexed 25 0 R 15 45 0 R] endobj 30 0 obj[/Indexed 25 0 R 255 47 0 R] endobj 31 0 obj[/Indexed 25 0 R 255 49 0 R] endobj 32 0 obj<> endobj 33 0 obj<> endobj 34 0 obj<> endobj 35 0 obj<>stream 0000025705 00000 n

Here we'll give details of how to use this easy method to lay out a foundation, footing, deck, or just about any structure properly located, level, and square on the site. You will need a roll of string and some #10 galvanized nails for nailing your batter boards to the stakes after you have driven them into the earth.

The "3:4:5 Triangle Method" of layout for building a garage produces a perfect 90º corner as shown in the diagram. This is accomplished by setting batter boards a few feet outside the foundation corners and attaching strings to the top of them that will run along the outer edge of the foundation. Finally check if the strings are square by measuring both diagonals (the distance between opposite corners) which should be the same as one another. 0000002583 00000 n

I had the inspector go to your pages and review what I was talking about. Whichever wall you choose will not be adjusted after it’s set–so choose wisely. 0000025523 00000 n

Usually good practice dictates about 2' clearance between the batter corners and the proposed foundation. 0000002408 00000 n Then move to any adjoining corner to the first corner, and proceed the same way. The sooner we can get framing attached to our rows of posts the more-securely they'll stay in line.Below is a photo later in the construction of the Summerblue stage - once the posts were all in place we attached the three main deck beams.In our photo above workers are also tacking a few of our heavy 2" T&G treated wood deck board in place as a temporary brace to keep the three post and beam structures rigidly in place until the intermediate deck joists could be installed. Once you’ve chosen the spot for your shed, use batter boards and mason’s string to measure out the perimeter of the shed’s foundation.

0000005625 00000 n The stage build project continued with joist installation (Below I'm packing up tools as we finished building this deck-stage in the summer of 2001.Below is the Summerblue Arts Camp stage in 2017, sixteen years later. What are batter boards and how are they used to lay out a structure?Here we describe the rough and then precise layout of any structure on the ground using simple stakes, boards, string, a level and a measuring tape. Using 1x3 or 1x4 or similar lumber make three or four pointed stakes that are long-enough to drive into the soil securely and that will be tall enough that you can level your string lines over the ground. I needed lockable storage to keep my toddler away from sharp tools and solvents that my husband stores. Though the first stake locations are just approximate (the green stakes in my sketch), you might want a tack in the top of each stake so that later they can be placed more-precisely according to string lines. Is there one wall tight to setback requirements? You can see the soil was dense clay so digging was out of the question. Use to ensure square corners and straight walls with this quick, accurate, durable, and easy to use site squaring system.