There are three main reasons why you might want to tie your shed down:
- wind
- water
- government regulations
Wind can lift your shed off the ground and toss it into your neighbors yard. Even a large and heavily loaded shed is no match for mother nature if the wind is high enough.
Even in a relatively calm environment micro bursts can devastate your yard and your shed in a matter of seconds.
Same thing with water. Recent flooding back east shows that few people are safe if the rainfall exceeds the norms.
Other places will only get occasional minor flooding but even six inches of fast moving water can displace a shed and take it down the street like a boat.
Another reason to tie your shed down might be government regulations. History shows some areas are wind or flood prone and just to build a shed you have to plan on tying it down to satisfy building code requirements.
The only problem is that commercial shed tie downs can be hard to find and expensive.
Read this post on commercially available shed tie downs.
But you can make your own shed tie downs out of common materials which will be stronger, at a fraction of the cost (see diagram above).
Here’s what you do to make your own cheap shed tie downs…
- Either before your shed is constructed or after, dig a 12 to 18 inch diameter hole about 24 to 36 inches into the ground at each corner of your shed. Dig more holes if you think one at each corner isn’t enough, or as building codes requires.
- Drop the end of a large metal strap about 2 inches wide and 24 to 36 inches long into each hole
- Attach the top end of each strap to the bottom edge of your shed with 6 to 8 long nails. Nail right into the floor frame of the shed.
- Fill at least the bottom half of the holes with concrete making sure the straps extends deep into the concrete, and let it dry
- Back fill the holes with dirt.
The main expense here will be time and the cost of the concrete. And the resulting tie downs will be far stronger and cheaper than any of the commercially available ones.