Build a garden house yourself (dimensions of the frame) 8x8 timber good?

Hello everyone,

we would like to build a garden shed.
It should be used both by our son for playing and by my wife as a sewing room.

I was planning to realize the whole thing as a wooden frame structure.
The exterior cladding should then be done with tongue and groove profile boards.
Inside, I would like to clad the whole thing with OSB.
I would also like to insulate the space between the profile boards and the OSB directly with suitable material.
So that it can be bearable there even at somewhat cooler temperatures.

A friend of ours has now offered us timber beams measuring 8 x 10 cm.

Now I wanted to ask if you think that 8 x 10 beams would be sufficient as a frame structure.
I would then place the studs at intervals of 60 cm.

Thanks & regards

Thomas

Either you go by feel, then that probably fits, (depending on the roof area resting there).

Or you calculate it. Vertical snow load kg/sqm on the roof area + weight of walls and roof structure itself, then divided by the number of studs, type of wood, cross-section. There are datasheets for the load-bearing capacity of a stud in the vertical direction. Wind load is absorbed by diagonals in the stud frame. Plan for safety. Such a calculation is by far not complete or absolutely correct, but for smaller self-built projects without high demands at least a guideline.

Hi,

thanks for your reply.
I hadn’t really thought of that yet... :-(

I’ve now roughly calculated the whole thing.
I first took the rafters, wood, roof covering, and snow load and then nicely rounded it up and ended up at 2,000 kg.

I couldn’t find anything directly regarding the load-bearing capacity of the wood.

KVH 60 x 100 cm can hold 790 kg at a length of 2.5 m.

Therefore, I would now just say that it should also be fine from a calculation perspective.

I basically have 22 support posts that have to bear the weight.

Even if you assume 3,000 kg of load because of sheathing, insulation, or something else, it would still be only 136 kg per post.

Regards

Thomas

Take a look with the search terms DDR Gartenlaube Typ GL 10 / 12 / 14 / 17 / 19 (the numbers indicate the size in sqm), they are quite well documented online.

As you yourself have pointed out, more attention must be paid to the roof structure. Regarding the beam thickness, I would have zero concerns for the side walls. In the US, they build two-story houses out of 2"x4" beams, the local equivalent to Langloch/Kalksandstein/Ytong...

If the whole thing is meant to be walkable, 100 by 60 mm pine with 60 cm rafter spacing and a 2.5 m span will not be sufficient. Walkable roofs or terraces are calculated with a live load of 400 kg/m². You come to about 150 kg/m² including the dead load of the roof. For 400 kg/m² you would need 14/8 cm. The roof will also hold up well to children climbing around with the thinner beams - I would just not build a roof terrace on it.