It’s 2024 and this video is 12 years old and STILL helping folks! I’m building a greenhouse base and this explanation of how to make a perfect rectangle is exactly what I needed. Thank you 😃
Thank you for this video, it's still helping people in 2022, like me. Took me an hour before i came to you tube to find a way to square my floor. Now I can move on to securing it to the skids and putting on the floor.
I was just outside scratching my head trying to figure out how to square up my floor before laying down the OSB sheets. Watched this video and then 2 min later and a few taps with the sledgehammer and a block of wood, it's perfectly square! Thanks for the simple breakdown and easy-to-understand drawing!
I had the same problem with my rectangle shaped shed foundation. The measurements are correct except diagonally. I know my alignments are off but not quite sure how to correct it. Your video solved it , thanks!!
Thank you!! Every website resource I referenced said measure and adjust. Fine, but how to adjust to reach square? You laid out HOW to do that. The line drawing helped immensely!
Just had tuff shed build a shed and having this problem. Now I am having to go back and forth and I paid over $9000 for this shed. They saying that it is dating where I ask them to put it, but not addressing the building base is not squared is the reasons it is sating at an angle and not centered.🥴🥴
@@AllAroundMathGuy I am back again referencing this video. Just wanted to say thank you for such simple instructions that even I can understand! Much appreciated!!
was just trying to do that for my cabin. I put the stakes in and they were 16'×16' on all sides but I couldn't get the corner to corner right. one would be 21' and the other would be 23'. then I would re adjust the stakes and they would be off again.
Good video man. I was beating my brains out because it was measuring exactly the same both ways and yet when I put a square on the corners it was off! Well finally I looked down the edge and could see that the board was bowing out and therefore it really was square I just had to straighten out the board...
Your video helped me several years ago square up a shed floor and again this weekend for a floating deck. When the measurements are off, how did you determine which end/corner to adjust? Thank you!
Thank you for the video. @1:50, the diagonals are not equal, about one inch off. I have my problem too when I did my wood floor today. All length and width are equal, but diagonals are not. I could figure out, why?
Can't seem to get my head around this. We have 4 stakes and a string, with lengths and widths measured that were correct. This wasn't square though. So using this method I measured the diagonal one side, noted the measurement then measured diagonal the other side and noticed this was off with the 1st side. So I marked where it should be based on the noted measurement of the first. Then I went to check the length dimension of this side that I had just marked and it was way out. I have an equivalent of dyslexia when it comes to math. Can anyone point out where I went wrong?
I stink at this stuff so I have a question. What if I have my boards at the correct measurements...say my rectangle is 8 x 10 but I have to square it a few inches like you did. Is it now 8.5 x 10 ...etc? Does this make sense?
If your boards are cut the same length (I mean each pair of opposite boards), and you make the diagonals equal, then it should indeed be a rectangle. If you want it to be exactly 8x10, then you'd have to make one pair of boards shorter by about 3 inches (ie. two board widths) so that when it's put together it's the 8x10 that you want.
Question: What if the 2 parallel lines are not matching? Such as one line is 20 ft, and the other line parallel to it is 21 ft but the lines appear straight? How do we fix that
If you are making a rectangular shape the parallel lines must be equal to each other (i.e. top and bottom are equal length, sides are equal length). There's no way to square all the corners and make a rectangle if the parallel lines aren't equal lengths. You need to make those lengths equal in some way (ex. cut the 21ft down to 20ft, if that works for your project).
Great technique but there IS still slack in Ur tape to account for. That dip in the tape could be as much as an inch? Just an unsolicited observation? Thanx!
thanks for the helpful vid. I need to mark our a large rectangle on the ground to set some concrete blocks to sit two 20 ft shipping containers onto. there will be a aprox 4 meter deck between conecting the two. can i use this method but using string lines? thanks
Yes, absolutely... very well said - this applies to both square and rectangular shed bases. The tricky part indeed is ensuring the form bases all in the same plane though. 🙂
Is it ok if they are about 1/4 inch off? I'm getting 176 on one diagonal and 176 1/4" on the other, but I've already screwed a few screws in (they must have shifted when I was screwing in the 4x4 support beams (I'm building a different kind of shed then you are).. I'm just wondering if I should unscrew and get it perfect... should be like 176 1/8" on both measurements instead. :)
From the video title, I'm disappointed that you didn't construct a second square shed with the same area as the rectangular shed using nothing but a compass and straightedge. :(
Forget about trying to match diagonal measurements. Too much trial and error. Just do the math. Pythagorean theorem. It is possible to have matching diagonals and still be out of square. If you have one bad measurement on any of the 4 sides, and then forced the rectangle into matching diagonals, all 4 corners would be out of square.
