One of today’s prefabricated sheds can make an attractive addition to your yard.
Each year, thousands of Arizona residents email or call Rosie Romero’s radio show with questions about everything from preventing fires in their chimneys to getting rid of tree roots invading their sewer systems. His goal is to provide answers that suit the specific lifestyle wherever someone lives in Arizona. Here are questions about home maintenance and improvement from the Southern Arizona area.
QUESTION: I need more storage for my home and I’m thinking of building a shed. The Pima County building codes will allow me to have a 200-square-foot shed without getting a building permit. But I would also like to build a basement/cellar under the shed. Is this something that’s worth doing?
I could dig a hole and then support the walls of the shed with timber. Or should I have the foundation and walls poured or should I pour a footing and then lay down a cinderblock wall? I have plenty of room on my lot — three acres. I don’t want to put a livable area under the shed — just storage. I figure that I could have roughly 600 square feet of storage by following this plan. What do you think?
ANSWER: While you won’t need a permit for a non-permanent shed, you most definitely will need one for a shed with a basement. For that, you will need to place a foundation with appropriate reinforcing steel placed horizontally as well as vertically in the footing. Then you will either lay up the walls with grouted concrete masonry blocks or poured-in-place concrete walls. Then either a dirt wall or a poured slab can be placed with a floor system installed, bearing on the basement walls.
As to whether it’s worth doing, only you and your budget can answer that question. Since you have three acres, maybe two sheds would provide you with sufficient storage to meet your needs — at a lower cost than having just one with a basement.
Q: My house was built in 2008 and I have a GE Monogram range hood that was installed by the workers who put in my air conditioning. The problem is that every time the wind blows a certain way, the damper in the range hood duct starts rattling. I read somewhere that that is because you need to have two dampers for a range hood. Will that work for my house?
A: Having two dampers will diminish the rattling sound, but that can be difficult to do. Instead you can install a better cap on the vent pipe to try to control the noise.
Q: My Southwestern-style home has wooden vigas and posts on its exterior. But I’m having a problem because they are drying out and splitting, and the paint is peeling off. What do you recommend for keeping these wooden posts in good shape? Should I use epoxy on them?
A: We get a lot of questions about deteriorating vigas and cracking posts, probably because so many homes in the Southwest were built with these trim items about 20 years ago. Injecting wooden posts and vigas with epoxy is a technique that has been used in the past to deal with problems, but it can be very expensive and may not stand the test of time as the wood will continue to deteriorate. In 10 years, you might have to do it all over again.
But some local firms in Arizona sell lightweight concrete and fiberglass or polyurethane replacements for vigas, posts and rafters. They look and feel like real logs or wood trim. The manufacturers cast them in molds to give them a wood-grained surface finish; and they sell them in colors that look very authentic.
These lookalikes can last for decades and are a much better long-term alternative to replacing your old logs and vigas with real wooden logs that can deteriorate after a few years due to heat and moisture.
For more do-it-yourself tips, go to rosieonthehouse.com. An Arizona home building and remodeling industry expert for 25 years, Rosie Romero is the host of the syndicated Saturday morning Rosie on the House radio program, heard locally from 8-11 a.m. on KNST-AM (790) and -FM (97.1) in Tucson and KGVY-AM (1080) and -FM (100.7) in Green Valley. Call 888-767-4348.
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