Railway Sleeper Base Tip

[benans]

Hello

Sorry to potentially re-ask something but I would just like to be absolutely clear.

I'm going to put up an 8x10 wooden cabin (with a floor) and I have 10 old large creosoted railway sleepers left over from garden landscaping. They are utterly coated in tar (hence why they weren't the ones in the raised beds...), so I was hoping to use them for my cabin base.

I would really like some information on how to level them; from my reading I gather I should do the following, but i'm not absolutely clear.
1. Dig a hole for all sleepers to sit in.
2. Fill said hole with builders sand to level.
3. Put sleepers into sand and make level (by piling sand underneath? Never been clear on this point).
4. Cover with membrane.
5. Build cabin effortlessly and with no problems.

Does that work? I'm a half-decent DIYer, nothing special, I've been renovating my house for the last year and have most of the tools inc a nice chainsaw should i need it, but I'm trying to keep costs down so want to use the sleepers instead of a concrete base.

I've been using these two links shed-base-and-floor-questions-sorry-t11899.html, railway-sleepers-for-garden-project-t19075.html but neither have quite made it clear...

Thank you

Ben

 

[cammy9r]

Hi, that will work provided the ground is hard and not soft. If soft you will need to dig down to hard and back fill with type 1 aggregate so as not to have a thick bed for sand.
Best to use sharp sand or whatever it is known as locally, like granite sand/coarse sand. Builders sand is too fine and when saturated will move, think quick sand.

 

[RobinBHM]

I think it would be awkward to level your sleepers like that.

Maybe you could buy some high density concrete blocks and dig out holes for them, ideally down to hard sub soil then set them level to one another. When done you just need to lay your sleepers onto the concrete blocks acting as pads. I don't know your sleeper sizes, but maybe one block at each and and one in the middle of each would do. The 7N blocks are about £1.50.

The easiest way is to lay the corner blocks first and get them dead level to one another. Then work from these to lay the rest in place.

It is probably best to remove some soil so that the sleepers have an air gap under them, that way they wont rot nearly as quickly.

It is a bit of a trade off really, your method will work but you would be setting the sleeper on top of sand which will be sitting in top soil and may move around and the sleepers will be sitting in damp sand all the time. If you dig a bit deeper for the concrete blocks, then you will be sitting the blocks onto harder soil but you will be bearing on a smaller area (still not much of a load no each block).

Either way will give you a good base for less effort and cost than a concrete slab.

 

[Ed209]

One potential problem you can have with a raised support instead of concrete is rats living underneath


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