RMH is a workshop

I am planning on building a backyard shed/workshop/sleeping quarters. It will be stick framed, about 16x12. My idea is to build the dragon on the 12' side with about 30' equivenlent pipe inc 90's, and using pebbles and rocks for the mass. I haven't built one before but am confident in my abilities(sheetmetal joirneyman, b-gas ticket, installer of many woodstoves) My big question for those with more foundation experience is: What should I build this shed on? I am trying to avoid the department of sad, and the idea of a concrete truck showing up to pour a slab throws big"hey lookit what we are doing over here!". My idea is sonotubes down about three feet and build the floor on top of those with 2x8 joists. The rest of the shed is pretty straight foreward, framing wise, I just want to make sure I get the footing/foundation correct so the beast doesn't make the shed disappear into one of the old coal shafts under our little village:) thanks!

Presumably your 2x8 joists would be running in the 12' dimension, so the RMH mass would be parallelling them and putting the load on just a few joists. I would double up the joists in that area, and add several sonotubes supporting them at center or 1/3 points. Also including extra-heavy-duty fasteners or steel brackets at the joist-to-rim connections would be wise.

I am doing the same thing as you. Lol I think I have decided to dig a small footer and place my stove on that so I know it will not move. Time has a way of shifting things on ya.

How deep is your frostline? Whether it will be better to use a bunch of deep sonotube piers or a single spread footing (more or less on grade) will be influenced by how far down you have to go to get a stable base. If you make a reinforced concrete footing and decouple it from the rest of the floor, you can let the RMH float if necessary without problems.

Hi thanks for getting the ideas flowing for me. I didn't think about all the load on potentially three joists, so maybe I could box that section off, make a 4x12 section with the joists running opposite to disperse the load with a couple more tubes in there. Or I could pour a slab, but again, trying to avoid the who concrete truck thing. Mixing a slab that size on site seems like a pain in the rear. We essentially have no frost level to seek of here, since the ground is rarely frozen. Damp, cool, cloudy winters, lots of rain. I will chat with some framer friends about the frost level stuff for the local area.

The frost line is like 18 or 20 inches here. I have no concert in my plan for my RMH. I am going to use gravel and large stones to set my stove on. I am trying to do everything on the cheep here when I can. So far I have spent around one hundred bucks on fire brick and stove pipes. All I need now is a break in the weather.