Not Building on the Flat Needn’t be a Slippery Slope

If you’ve long considered having a log cabin but have been put off because your garden is undulating or sloping, don’t despair. There are a number of solutions available for even the hilliest land.

A concrete slab is probably the best base if your ground is firm and level. However, this can be an expensive method and can look ugly if you need to build up the level to cope with uneven land.

Our office cabin here at Keops is a good example. From the back corner of our ten metre long cabin to the opposite front corner, the land drops away by more than half a metre. In this case a concrete base was an unsuitable solution, so a perimeter brick wall was built with a sleeper wall running up the middle. A grid of pressure treated bearers sit happily across this, providing a solid level base for the cabin and floor.

An alternative is to build a timber frame using pressure treated posts which sit on concrete padstones. You can see from the photo that this method allows you to build in quite extreme circumstances successfully. A typical structure would comprise of 200 x 75mm main timbers to from compartments, 150 x 50mm timbers on joists within the compartments at 500mm centres. The whole frame would be elevated on 150 x 150mm posts and lengths to suit the ground conditions and the whole top surface covered in 10mm wpb plywood under the cabin area.

Pile foundations are another method, either using bricks or blocks or pouring reinforced concrete. Again a timber frame can be constructed to sit on top of the piles, and the cabin built on this.

Whatever your ground conditions, we can offer practical advice and suggest the best methods to help you ‘cope with the slope’.