KITSET SHEDS, AVAILABLE NOW | LEARN MORE
KITSET SHEDS, AVAILABLE NOW | LEARN MORE
Philip Solomon has years of experience putting up large sheds and his top tip is that shed aesthetics are important.
“A lot of people just focus on what they want to put in the shed until it goes up and then they say, ‘Oh, I don’t like that’.”
Philip has installed three large sheds on different properties he’s developed so, when it came to designing and building a large shed on his own property in Gisborne, he had already developed firm ideas about what he wanted. That included making sure it looked right in the landscape and complemented the house.
He needed to drive a truck and trailer straight in, which set the width and span at 12 metres. He also needed a bay for a boat on a nine-metre trailer, and both the boat and the truck needed high doors. He settled on 3.2 metres, and a stud height of four metres.
More than just a shed
Another part of the plan was to build in some accommodation, an office, lunchroom, and sleepover, complete with a bathroom at one end of the shed. As you can see in the pictures, that was built separately inside the shed later. Philip preserved the shed’s full useable floor area by building the ceiling of the accommodation strong enough to be a mezzanine floor. He says the four-metre height gives just enough headroom to use that space for storage without making the building too tall.
He chose the colours, and also window and door frames to match the 355- square-metre house he’s going to build on the same site — because shed aesthetics are important. So much so, according to Phil, that in each of the three developments he’s done so far with big sheds, he’s built the shed first.
We asked Phil how he decided which steel shed maker he was going to go with and he said he’d gone with KiwiSpan every time. KiwiSpan offered the choice of colours that tie in with house designs. “Also they are dominant as far as strength goes,” he says.
“If you are building in a high wind zone, like we are here, you need something substantial, something designed and engineered so it’s not going to be a problem.”
Building for strong winds
Builder Terry O’Neill of KiwiSpan Gisborne said Philip knew exactly what he wanted, so speccing the building was straight-forward. KiwiSpan’s design programme selects the correct sized portals and framing to suit the span, height, and the wind load. Being in a high wind zone meant the shed had to be strong to avoid flexing which would cause issues with the Gib-lined area. The large roller doors are industrial strength and the aluminium windows are all double-glazed.
The programme allows for different roof angles to be chosen to tie in with other buildings onsite. As the shed sits 200mm higher than the house will, Phil chose to keep the roof pitch shallow at 11° — again to avoid making the shed look too big. Adding the verandah roof to the end gable, over the ranch slider door, was also a simple task.
“Phil is pretty experienced and did a good job of the site works, so that was straightforward too,” Terry says.
Phil says that included capturing water from the roof from both the shed and the house and diverting it into two 30,000-litre tanks alongside the shed.
Provisioning for water was important as the house will have a lap pool that will need to be topped up.
Phil is now keen to get on with the house build and, as in the previous properties he’s developed, having a big shed already onsite with storage space, a workshop and plumbed in facilities — and even a shady spot to have lunch with a view over the neighbour’s vineyard — is going to make that so much easier.
Written By: Ian Parkes, The Shed.
Photography By: Brennan Thomas.
