October, 2026
The Elephant Rooms
Draycott, Derbyshire
We installed 17 ground screws and a triple-ring-beam timber base to raise a community log cabin above winter floodwater at a nature recovery site beside the River Derwent, a plot where conventional foundations would have been underwater within months.
The Elephant Rooms is a small not-for-profit community health and wellbeing centre in Draycott, Derbyshire, with a strong focus on mental health.
Alongside its therapeutic centre and gardens, the charity runs a nature recovery and wellbeing project on 1.3 hectares of land just ten minutes’ walk from the village. The lowland meadow and wet woodland habitats have created a valuable community space that encourages people to spend more time outdoors.
When funding was secured for new infrastructure – including a log cabin for welfare facilities and equipment storage – the site itself posed the obvious problem.
The land is located right next to the River Derwent and floods a couple of times a year during winter. The Environment Agency predicts a maximum flood depth at the cabin’s position, including climate change allowances, of 0.6m above ground level.
At least the silty soil, underlaid with gravels, drains quickly once the river recedes. However, any cabin built at ground level would still spend part of every winter sitting in water – an immediate route to rot, damage, and a very short working life.
Pouring concrete here would have made little sense either. It’s slow, messy, and entirely at odds with a project dedicated to restoring habitats. The cabin needed to be raised at least 0.6m above ground level, on foundations that wouldn’t disturb the meadow and woodland being recreated around it.
The solution
Garden building specialists QuickGardens recommended ground screws as a cost-effective solution, and our professional installation team delivered the foundations.
In July, we installed 15 x 76mm x 2500mm ground screws to support the cabin itself, plus 2 x 76mm x 1250mm ground screws for the front platform and deck, topped with a 6″ x 2″ timber base and triple ring beam to carry the structure.
The 2500mm screws anchor deep into the gravels below while leaving enough height above ground to lift the cabin safely beyond the predicted 0.6m flood level.
When the river level rises in autumn or winter, water passes beneath the building and drains away naturally.
Quick, clean, and kind to the habitat
A habitat restoration project leaves no room for excavation, spoil heaps, or concrete contaminants entering the soil. Ground screws avoid all of it – no digging, no spoil to remove, no concrete, and no risk of run-off reaching the river.
Installation was quick and clean, with the developing meadow and woodland left undisturbed and the surrounding ground exactly as we found it. And if the site’s needs ever change, the screws can be removed without leaving a trace.
The 2500mm screws are much longer than we’d typically use for a garden room or log cabin, but the principle is the same.
The results
The Elephant Rooms now has a sturdy, level cabin raised comfortably above the floodwater, ready to support volunteers and visitors on site all year round – with welfare facilities and equipment storage protected from winter flooding.
It’s a superb example of what ground screws can accomplish: turning an awkward, flood-prone plot into a usable building site without compromising the environment.
Read our guide to building foundations near water, or try the ground screw calculator to specify your own project.
