Most guides about building sheds assume that you have fairly even ground. Even we make no exception with our how to build a shed base guide. This is understandable because usually yards are flat. Usually. Come to see ours on our hilly terrain in the mountain.

So how do you deal with this? Is your only option paying for excavator to flatten your ground? What if there is a large rock? Let's see, we have some other ideas.

1. Build Your Shed on Piles

Have you seen how people in the rivers and lakes in South East Asia built their homes? If they can build whole homes on piles why not use this technique for building your shed? It can save you a lot of money and efforts to flatten the ground or building a large concrete base. Building on piles require stable shed floor and of course well planned piles to support the construction. Using stakes with different length you can achieve horizontal position of the shed without doing any work on the uneven ground.

2. Piles on One Side

You don't have to build the whole shed on piles. Sometimes this would mean to raise it uncomfortably high. If your terrain is sloped, you can slightly dig one side of the foundation while the other is supported by screw piles. Here you need to find the balance between digging too much and raising the piles too high. There is no universal formula, but I would aim for something in the middle.

3. Dig to Even Ground

Of course, let's not forget the most popular solution - to dig the ground until you flatten it. Depending on the ground structure and how sloped your terrain is this might be done by hand or you may need an excavator. The advantage of going this route is that you can then apply the standard techniques for building concrete slab or deck piers foundations. The web is full of such guides and any local builder will also know how to build such (in case you decide to use help).

4. Burrying Part of the Shed in the Ground

This idea follows the concept of the earthship homes and is similar to idea 2. But instead of supporting half of the shed on pliers, you flatten the lower side of the slopped terrain and dig into the higher. This technique is suitable if the terran has lower and flatter part and is not a rock. The advantage of such solution is the great shed insulation and stability you achieve. Be careful with moisture as it can cause a lot of troubles however. I recommend you to read some of the sites that talk about earthip homes. You won't need all that information to build a shed, but they are good place to get to know about the possible downsides and problems.

5. Two Floor Shed

This idea extends on the above one. If you have a slopped terrain you can build your shed on two floors. The bottom one can be dug into the ground and used as root cellar. Its floor will be flat and used for a base for the second floor - the real shed.

Think about it: you don't even need flat base for the root cellar. You can build small terraces inside it, using the terrain specifics and store your food there. This is total win provided that you can spend more time and money on the whole building.

We'd love to hear about your solutions for building sheds on uneven ground. Please share!