Metal Building Foundations in Lake Wales, FL

Rolling ground under a Lake Wales steel building

The City of Lake Wales describes itself as rolling hills on the highest ground in peninsular Florida, reached by US 27 and State Road 60. USGS calls the Lake Wales Ridge the highest and longest ridge in Polk County, up to about 305 feet, with sinkhole lakes, closed basins and deep water tables. A steel building needs a dead-level floor and bolts at exact heights, and on this ground the lot may not be level to begin with.

So the first question on a Lake Wales job is how much dirt moves before any concrete does. This page covers that, the two kinds of soil you can find inside one city, grove buildings, and the apron out front. For how we build these anywhere in the county, see our metal and steel building foundation page, and for other work in town, our Lake Wales page.

Candler on the hilltops, Myakka in the low ground

The city's comprehensive plan soils map, built on NRCS data, lists Candler sand, Tavares fine sand, Astatula and Pomello on the sandy high ground, and Immokalee sand, Pomona fine sand and Smyrna and Myakka fine sands, which are flatwoods soils. Both kinds show up in and around Lake Wales, sometimes a short walk apart.

They behave very differently under a building pad. UF/IFAS lists Candler and Astatula as excessively drained and Tavares as moderately drained. A South Florida Water Management District soils study puts the seasonal high water table more than six feet down on ridge sands like Candler and Astatula, and only a half foot to a foot and a half below the surface for about four months a year on flatwoods sands like Myakka and Smyrna. That study describes a soil category, not your parcel.

What that means on the job: a hilltop pad drains fast and the work is mostly cut, compaction and keeping the sand from washing during a storm. A flatwoods corner needs the pad raised above wet-season water, which means fill. Look up your parcel on the NRCS Web Soil Survey, or check the city's soils map, and send us what you find.

Cut, fill and stepped footings on a sloped pad

Picture a 40 by 80 metal building on a lot that falls three feet from one end to the other. To get a level floor, you can cut the high end down, fill the low end up, or split the difference. Each choice changes the metal building foundation.

Fill is the one with a code trigger. When a shallow footing sits on compacted fill deeper than 12 inches, the Florida Building Code requires a geotechnical investigation that sets the fill material, lift thickness, test method and minimum density. A steep lot crosses that line fast on its low end. Cutting the high end avoids fill but can expose a different soil than the rest of the pad, and that's worth a look from the engineer.

On some slopes the engineer draws a stepped footing or a deeper grade beam on the low side instead of a tall fill pad. We build whichever the sheet shows and bring in the density testing the geotechnical report calls for. Because USGS describes the ridge as dotted with sinkhole lakes, tell us and your engineer about any depression on the lot that has grown over the years. Earthwork shows up as its own line in our estimate.

Equipment sheds for groves and pasture

Citrus has been part of the Lake Wales economy since the city's earliest days, and a metal building here may well be for working land: equipment covers, packing space, hay and feed storage. Those floors carry tractors, sprayers and loaded trailers, and the engineer sizes the slab and the column piers for that.

A metal building used mainly for farming on agricultural land may fall under Florida's farm-building exemption, which can lift building-code rules but never covers a dwelling and leaves floodplain rules in place. Polk County ties its exemption affidavit to an issued permit, and inside city limits the city decides. Our farm building exemption guide explains the test. Exempt or not, the floor gets the same pour.

Grove sites bring their own access questions: a long sand lane, irrigation lines near the pad, and rows that limit where a truck can turn. We walk the route in, not just the pad, and price a pump if a mixer can't get close.

The apron, the parking pad and the city's permit list

A steel building doesn't always end at its own walls. Trucks and trailers need a concrete apron at the big door, and some owners want a parking pad beside it. The City of Lake Wales permit requirements list new buildings, including storage buildings, and also driveways and parking pads as work that needs a permit, through the Building Division on W. Central Ave.

So put the apron and any parking pad on the drawings and the application with the building, rather than adding them after the steel is up. One set of plans, one set of inspections, and the apron gets poured to meet the floor at the right height. We pour the apron, the parking pad and the foundation on the same job when the schedule allows, and the joint at the door is planned so water runs away from the building.

A Lake Wales mailing address can still sit outside the city, and then the Polk County Building Division in Bartow handles the permit. Check the parcel first. Our RV and boat pads page covers stand-alone pads if that's part of the plan.

A 40 by 80 building at our per-foot range

Our range for engineered piers or a thickened-edge slab with an anchor-bolt template is $8 to $14 per sq ft, with projects from $15,000 to $80,000+. A 40 by 80 building is 3,200 sq ft, so the foundation alone works out to $25,600 to $44,800.

On a Lake Wales lot, the swing comes mostly from the ground. A flat hilltop pad with good truck access sits near the bottom. A lot with a three-foot fall, a geotechnical report and density tests, a stepped footing, or a long grove lane that needs a pump sits toward the top. An apron or parking pad is priced as its own line. The bolt template goes in the same way every time: built from the manufacturer's plan, set in the forms, and measured before and after the pour. You get a free written estimate after we see the site.