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Thinking outside the square. We are planning on building a earth covered house, now I thought what not do the shed as well.
I have the latice type uprights and roof spans from an old shed, If I erected these then erected tilt up concrete panels against them added all the geo... and waterproof membranes and back filled with gravel and earth would the metal frame be strong enough
You'd need a structural engineer to look at it. Not sure too many would want to take the responsibility/job on.
Talk to your design engineer.
a tilt-up build should be designed for the proposed method of erection and any external loads -- not guessed at based on what you see on a building site. If your guess is wrong, fixing the problem is likely to get awfully expensive really really fast.
If it were me, I'd do the same design for the earth covered house and the earth covered shed and install a self supporting internal frame within the shed
Don't even try attempting to design this unless you are an engineer. Concrete is obviously very heavy. You don't want it to collapse and kill people.
Speak to a consulting engineering firm. It's not a difficult thing to design. It's the diy building methods that will be an issue.
Short answer is that you would need quite a strong frame. Soil is very heavy too.
Most engineers would be extremely hesitant to provide quantification on a forum.
Unless you are a structural engineer (you wouldn't be posting if you were), don't guess, engage a qualified structural engineer and do as they say, you won't have any insurance cover or comeback otherwise
NOQuote:
Originally Posted by Tonto
that's the very short answer :D
the slightly longer answer ...
an earth covered structure is essentially a retaining wall with cross-structure bracing at the floor and roof.
a steel framed shed -- lattice type framing or otherwise -- is less than structurally weak in comparison to a retaining wall