We were finally successful after a few fits ‘n false starts with moving the llama shed out from behind our house into the field where all the critters need it to sleep in. Maybe the goats will jump our middle fences less now!
Here are some pictures of the shed where it was sitting behind the house. 
Originally it had been moved there by a tractor with front end loader attachment which drove into the shed and lifted it by the roof beams. Not a bad way to do it at all since it’s very solidly constructed where the roof meets the walls. The shed is framed in 4×4 pressure treated posts so was pretty sturdy, or so we thought.
We discovered there were no metal brackets on the bottom of the frame or at the bottom corners at all either. This, after it pulled out of true during the 1st half of the move. It was a very good thing that we nailed in some cross bracing on the bottom of the shed before trying to move it as that kept the whole thing together in the end.
After much googling and over-thinking the project we got down to it. We had originally thought to sink some eye bolts through the bottom of the frame itself and hook up a tow chain to that. We tried it, and due to getting rolled steel bolts instead of forged eyebolts, we failed miserably when the eye bolts unrolled themselves and ended up looking like this: 
We had briefly wondered about wrapping the old tow bands we had around the shed and pulling that way, but dismissed the idea since we thought it might cause the shed to collapse.
After this bad end, we decided to bite the bullet and purchase the appropriate jacks and tow hooks and 4×4 pressure treated posts to make skids. This turned out to be a very good idea. After watching several you-tube videos, it seemed it could/should be easy. We discovered that since we’d not done this before we made it more complicated than it really needed to be, so we did something smart: we called in a friend who had moved several sheds for a tie-breaker vote.
It turns out both Darren and I were having similar ideas on how to move the shed but were describing them in somewhat different ways only confusing the other yet actually being in agreement. Talk about frustrating, we thought we were having completely opposing ideas, but we were actually agreeing with each other. Our buddy Allan found it really amusing to watch, and helped us get down to work instead of debating shed ballistics.
I sent the 2 of them out to look at the shed and confer while I drilled holes into the skids for the bolts and tow hooks we were using. By the time I’d gotten those done, the guys came back inside and said come look. I was surprised to find they’d already jacked up the shed, missing only 1 thing being the weight-spreading boards under the jacks to prevent them from sinking into the ground. They had dug the holes in the ground for the jacks and lifted the shed. Ok then, let’s get it blocked! I had originally not even thought about the need to block it, but Allan suggested it thankfully which forestalled a potential safety risk.
I had thought to use some old steel wheel rims that were lying around since I couldn’t find anything else, but then we uncovered about 8 half railroad ties lying about in the tall grass we hadn’t noticed before. Perfect! We used those quite successfully and got the shed jacked and blocked on all sides. Then we slid the skids in.
Originally I was going to bolt the bottom of the shed to the skids with 12 inch long bolts but realised it would be really hard to get the holes in the right place so we didn’t attach the skids to the shed. We just used the weight of the shed to sit it solidly on the skids. The bolts we did use, but sticking up vertically through the skids to help pull the shed along and keep it on the skids. It worked pretty well!
So we hooked up our schedule 70 chain and hooks to the skid tow hooks and began to pull. We had pre-measured the space we needed to go through at the gate and new what vectors to pull on. The shed started moving, good, good, and zoom! Darren gunned it for the gate. Crap!!! Allan and I yelled at him to stop as he’d forgotten something really important that we needed to change the vector as we approached the gate to get around the tree…. So, Darren crashed the shed into the tree and got it stuck. We tried to rearrange and turn it but then things went bad and the skids slid askew and the shed pulled out of true.
The sun was going down by this time and we were kinda stressed and pretty tired so called it a day. Here’s some night pics of how it looked then:
The light of the next day revealed this:
And I knew we were going to need the chainsaw. I had hoped to only lop off the offending branches, but in the end we decided to take down that whole tree since it did have a large amount of woodpecker damage anyway. This way we could pull straight into the field and not try to turn the shed st all. I hoped the shed would pull back into true when we started the 2nd leg of pulling.
We got out the chainsaw today and cut the offending tree down and re-jacked and blocked the shed so we could rearrange the skids. I threw a 2×4 between the skids at the back between the shed wall and the skid bolts to add a bit of extra stability so the bolts wouldn’t pull through the plywood of the wall where it wasn’t attached to the bottom of the frame at present. We got it all hooked up and set on the skids again and started pulling. I drove this time and took it really slow. We hit some uneven ground but did ok and got it about 3 ft beyond the fenceline and then I stopped there.
The shed had pulled itself back into true and was oriented the right way to protect the critters from the prevailing winter winds. perfect! We put the fence back up and took out the bracing inside the shed and filled it with straw. Then we drove the critters out of the front field and introduced them to their new shelter. I also dragged the hay troughs out of the front field and put them in front of the shed to encourage them to use that area with the hay and the water handy right there.
So glad this is now done, we are due for the first snows and winter average temperatures to stay below zero in the upcoming week or two. Today was an awesome day to do the work outside being really warm at 8 celsius! I could work with no coat on! Too bad the wind came up after a while forcing us to don coats. Anyway, the critters are happy now and we’ve finally finished moving this beast of a shelter. A big accomplishment for us! Here’s some pics of it in its new spot:
