Coop is ordered, but now what?!

[GC-Raptor]

I leveled the ground where I put the cement blocks and put the blocks as pictured for maximum support.
I wanted to raise coop so chickens could go underneath for shade and protection from rain and snow.
Where I live, ground freezes and thaws.
After 3 winters the red coop has a slight tilt towards the front.
Nest boxes are heavy and overhang quite a bit.
I'll eventually have to jack it up to level again.

GC

 

[Blooming Hills Homestead]

Thank you for the input, we are located in central WI! I'll have to update my profile. The coop will be located high and dry, and our ground in very sandy. I guess I was asking as far as will putting three 6x8 skids down the opposite way the floor boards run? I hadn't considered the concrete blocks.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

What are your local resources???

Railroad timbers work well. Heavy, treated, moderately inexpensive, suitable for ground contact for many years. Lots of bearing area to distribute loads. But if there are none nearby (seems like they used to be everywhere, and then...) they don't do any good.

Landscape timbers aren't worth bringing home. Two years, best case, more work to replace than they save as sleds.


Wisconsin's frost line varies from high 50s to nearly 80 inches in depth, so you have a tremendous amount of frost heave. If you were to set that on posts/piers, I'd recommend a 4' depth. That's too much uplift for small bearing areas, like a dry brick perimeter. Neither would I use deck blocks/pier blocks, for the same reasons - concentrated point loads inducing twist at the corners - unless you set a lot of them (15, spaced 2' oc), and frame a base on those, onto which your coop was then set. That's probably overkill, but I'm doing mental math without benefit of first hand experience. Frost heave is about 9%, so you are dealing with (potential) uplift forces of 5 to 8" - as long as the ground does it evenly from corner to corner, that's manageable, its where the soils freeze at different rates that if can destroy, well, almost anything in time.

Coarse sand isn't particularly susceptible, Fine, silty sands are.