Red Clay and Rolling Hills
Piedmont Soil Moves Under Cheap Buildings
Greenville County sits on the Greenville soil series. Deep, well-drained, dark reddish-brown
sandy loam formed in ancient clay marine sediments. USDA Zone 8a. Around 50 inches of rain per
year, most of it arriving in short summer downpours that saturate the clay fast.
Red clay swells when wet and shrinks when dry. If you set a shed flat on the ground, the building
tilts, the door jams and the floor warps within a season. We've seen it happen to every
box-store unit in this market.
Your building sits on solid concrete block under the runners, set level before our crew leaves.
Air circulates underneath and water drains instead of pooling against the subfloor. We level the
building on block, up to about 30 inches of fall across the footprint. Steeper than that and the
site needs some work before we can deliver. Standard setup is one block high using 4x8x16 solid
concrete block, and you supply it before delivery day.