alt Hacker News> I’m not even a commercial builder. A bag of Portland cement concrete is $5/bag. You don’t need to pay $2k for such a small foundation.
An 8x10 6” slab has 1.5 cubic yards of concrete. Making concrete takes more than a bag of Portland cement, you also need gravel, sand, a mixer, a wood frame, a source of water, shovels, floats, et cetera. If you want rebar, add in steel and rebar tools and wire.
You could frame up the wood yourself and have Cemstone deliver the concrete but you still need to spread it out, float it, and finish it.
Instead of buying or renting all of that, I would sub it out. I subcontract out light pole bases and concrete pads for transformers, EV chargers, and other equipment all of the time.
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It isn't easy but you can economize with 4" in the middle. It will still be a lot of concrete to mix up if not using a truck. Fiberglass rebar is easier to wrangle for a DIY job as well.
60lb premixed concrete bags are $5 in the US, and getting it delivered would be cheaper at this scale - the slab could cost under $500. The other costs sound normal -> materials + markup + labor. The more realistic money saving would have been a prefabbed module that doesn't need a slab for less than half the price. It would be easier to get rid of / sell in the future too. This looks much nicer though.