anchors

what have y'all found to be the most readily available and cost friendly material to anchor your structure?

Our local bakeries will give us 5 gallon buckets for free or for a dollar each, Home Improvement stores would sell broken bags of 'Crete for a dollar and local contractors would give us PVC. Christmas Trees are free after Christmas, trees, limbs, etc are free after storms...concrete blocks or bricks will normally be donated after builds are complete. Almost everyone has milk crates that they will donate and they can be filled with a big free rock, and a lot of businesses have tie straps or strapping material that they will donate to a worthy cause!:)

Like it was said you can use busted bags of quickcrete to save money. On pallet stakebeds we use rocks in the pallets. I like to check around where old houses are burned or just torn down , sometimes I get whole truck loads of old concrete blocks for free. Watch the burned ones cause too much heat can make them crumble. Old feed sacks full of rocks can be used too. I try not to use anything that costs but the hauling when I can. I get lots of stuff for free or just a mess of fillets.

Actually, we were VERY CAREFUL to ask for donated MATERIALS only; we actually declined several offers of cash or checks. We DID allow persons to buy us blocks, and 1 person who wanted to remain unknown paid for 300 ($150) and never did find out who it was. But he singlehandedly paid for almost 1/2 of ALL the blocks "splashed" in our 1st 6 yrs...

I know of guys that use rocks found at lake, put in gunny sacks or buckets. Buckets with sand or gravel in it, with a little sacket poured over the top to seal in the sand & gravel. Are a few ways I have seen used to short cut the cost of sacket. I have also seen guys use busted up cement put in a bucket, then seal with a thin layer of sack-crete. There are all linds of ways to short-cut the cost of weight. Just use the imagination a little, and not risk the enviroment with your decision.


I personally use the Busted bags of sack-crete for $.50-$1.00 per bag, to keep the cost down.




keith

You can also combine some of these ideas by using large rocks or blocks to take up space before pouring the quickcrete in.

to savemoney you can use the busted bags of quick create and put them in the holes on a cement block. Then fold a big piece of wire over and stick it in both sides of the just poured create. when it dries you have a block that weighs more than a regular block because of the create and an anchor point to attach your brush too.

Some great ideas in this thread, thanks everybody.

I use 3-6ft pieces of RR rail.