wrote in message
ups.com...
I have been working over the last few months an area for a 24x32 pole
barn. I have been tilling with a tractor tiller and scraping with the
tractor bucket.

I am wanting to start on it again. It seems about 7 inches off from the
highest spot to the lowest. The ground is hard now.

What would be the best way to do this? It is hard for me to eyeball. I
am using string and a line level.

I guess what I am asking is should I keep using the tiller or should I
have dirst brought in and try to build it up to level? Expense is a
major concern as I have a new baby at home and we are going to have to
buy another vehicle soon.


You have a couple of options: You can fill the area and compact the earth,
using a level of whatever sort you're comfortable with. Unless drainage is
a real problem, having a pole barn's floor a fraction of an inch off-level
won't hurt anything.

Or, you can build the barn on the stand as-is, and proceed to fill and level
piece-meal as you have money and time. One of the advantages of a pole barn
is that it's an open structure until you decide to close it in. That means
you can do a lot of the work normally done up-front after the structure is
up. Leveling, placing a slab, enclosing bays -- all can be done after the
poles and roof are in place. You can even do it one bay at a time, if
you're so-inclined.

You probably won't be able to accomplish much with the tiller, unless you
loosen up the dirt with it, then MOVE it to the low spots with your bucket
(scrape box, or front-end loader?). Even if one end of the barn ends up
below normal grade, you have the option of contouring the ground outside the
drip line, and providing drainage swales around the barn to move water away.
But still, the best option is to get all of the barn's floor area at or
above grade at the "high" end. On a sloped lot, you'll STILL have to
provide swales at the high end to move water away as it comes down the
slope, toward the barn.

Building a pole barn on an out-of-level lot is a lot easier than it sounds.
You get poles that are longer than you need by at least the greatest height
out of level. You sink them all to the prescribed depth (as discussed at
length in other threads here).

Then you secure your collar beams level on the poles, and cut off the tops
of the poles after the fact. You'd end up doing that anyway, even if the
lot were perfectly level, because it's hard to get all the poles buried so
precisely that all the pole tops are level with one-another. Better to seat
them without paying too much attention to precision depth, but well and
hard - so settlement won't occur unevenly - then trim them all to finished
height.

LLoyd