Putting up a 10x6 shed for my daughter on Friday. The present base is pea gravel, ideally I want to use that plastic honey comb stuff but she cant afford it, she rents so I'm also not in the position to lay a concrete base. I'm planning to put it up on blocks, having a block every few feet or so, the floor is reinforced with batons and its for guinea pigs (a lot of them though) so not going to have anything too heavy in it. Is this going to work ok and can I use the lighter weight aerated blocks.
Yes - you can use blocks though, depending on the thickness of the floor batons, you might want to lay out some approriately treated beams (laid in the opposite direction) across the blocks for the floor to be screwed to. The hardest part is digging in and levelling the grid of blocks - I laid thirty blocks in a 5x6 grid for a 8x10 ft shed/workshop (but that was probably overkill). I used lower density concrete blocks, cut in half to save money. The crush strength is far in excess of what a shed of that size will exert upon them. We had a block manufacturing plant at work, along with the equipment to test them. Also a patch of damp-proof membrane on each of the blocks will mitigate moisture migration from the ground, and the raised nature of the base will allow for improved airflow underneath, but it will likely mean putting in at least one step for access to the shed.
As @David says, best to use wooden bearers running at right angles to the way the floor batons go (and make sure said bearers are suitably treated).
Depending on how much gravel you've got you could knock up a simple frame and sit the shed on that, around 5cm of gravel in a hole with a treated timber frame sitting on top with the beams in the opposite direction to the shed base like David says would do. Depends what works out cheapest really as with sheds it's more about the drainage and not having it sitting in water than a weight thing.
