urgently calling all stratco owners/installers

Hi guys,

I finally took the plunge and bought a stratco homeshed at the end of last year and have been procrastinating about whether I would build it myself or pay someone to do it ever since.

Well, the arrival of my first child 8 weeks ago made the decision for me and so now I'm paying someone to do it. Trouble is, after budgeting to do it myself with a few mates I found the quotes excessive and didn't know what to do until my friendly landscaper offered to do it with one of his chippy mates for half the rate of the Stratco registered installers. Now, that doesn't necessarily phase me as a) I was going to do it myself anyway so he probably won't be any worse and b) he has all the necessary tools, lasers etc. and the manpower. He's already done a tonne of landscaping/retaining walls for me and whilst they aren't necessarily perfect everyone who sees it is impressed and it happened very quickly and totally transformed the place. Anyway, the garage kit is predrilled, has instructions and bolts together so how wrong can it go? right?!

My question to you (hope you're still reading) is, with kits like this, do you HAVE to install the wall sheets whilst it's on the ground? or can you put the frame up first and sheet after? The guys have read the instructions and watched the video but they really want to erect the frame and do the slab before they put the sheets on so they can work easily. I can totally see the logic in this (I'm not bolting to a slab I'm pouring concrete footings after the frame goes up) - I was going to get them to pour the slab inside the shed as per the manufacturers instruction but they would prefer to do it without the sheets in place and form up the slab which I have to agree seems more sensible, we can even rebate the edge that way to have a nice detail of the sheets meeting the slab.

My only compromise to the instructions was maybe if I put one sheet on the end so that I knew it was square and it would make it easier to add the rest of the sheets later because I would know I had a plumb edge to start from. What do you think?

abrogard, I read your post with great interest as you have the same garage and I was wondering what you had learnt from it.

Thanks for reading, they are installing week after next so it would be good to get any feedback before then. Instructions from manufacturer below, its the 3.9 x 9.2m version

http://stratco.com.au/pdf/Installati...on%20Guide.pdf


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