Outdoor work area + driveway roof with hoist

Since we can't get to our new house, we had to ... *cough* ... HIRE someone to work on some things we were planning to do ourselves.

This seems like it would be of interest here, so I'll update this as I have something to update.

The basic idea is we have a flat, paved 4x4 meter work area in front of our new machine shop which is an extension of our house. The workshop door has a mini loading dock and wide driveway heading straight to the road. A vehicle can be backed up all the way across the work area to the loading dock. Above the work area is an electric hoist on a track to allow getting stuff on/off the ground, vehicle, loading dock as well as to hold things while painting/welding and sliding into our E-Z Bake powder paint oven.

So, without further blather, I'll start showing pictures.

Basic idea of how things fit, with room to pull extra vehicle off driveway for guests, firewood delivery, etc.

Attachment 37478

General style of finished roof

Attachment 37479

Desired post spacing

Attachment 37480

Roof Design

Attachment 37481

The hoist itself

Attachment 37482

Status as of yesterday, this is the welder's place, not mine...

Attachment 37483

Attachment 37484

Attachment 37485

Attachment 37486

Attachment 37487

Attachment 37488

The actual workshop and part of the work area

Attachment 37489

Driveway before they finished the foundation tiles and before the gate was built

Attachment 37490

Driveway passed the loaded lorry test

Attachment 37491


We are posting some pictures on our web site as we get them, but if you want to see the whole history of the house, it's here...

https://durandinterstellar.com/photos/Our_New_Home/

Christmas letter for 2020

https://durandinterstellar.com/photo...etter_2020.pdf

Stay tuned for updates..

Happy holidays to one and all!

Упс... Так ты из Горячего ключа? Сосед? Я из Краснодара.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Slim-123

Упс... Так ты из Горячего ключа? Сосед? Я из Краснодара.

---

We'll have to meet up when we get there. Hopefully "soon" in the New York sense, not the Russian "soon". :)

Today at the new house they were mainly cleaning up as all the walls are done including covering with nano wallpaper for texture and reinforcing.

Attachment 37544

The workers managed to break a new broom in 1 hour. The replacement should be harder to break

Attachment 37543

Work Area and driveway roof still under construction, due for delivery and installation this week.

In related news, we heard today that the border may not open until MARCH! Well, gives us time to sell off more stuff and pack. Last week we renegotiated the place we're living now and can now stay here until the end of...March! Cutting things a bit close!

Today's status pictures. Roof trusses almost done, still scheduled for installation this week. I'm guessing it might be a long week. :)

Attachment 37575

Attachment 37576

Attachment 37577

All the above stuff gets installed next week. Also our loading dock gets it's first official use...maybe. Depending on the status of the roof installation, a lorry will be delivering our bed and a couple of sets of drawers. In theory they can just back in and unload it into the workshop. Our friends will take it from there and set it up before we get there.

We've had TWO snowstorms this winter! Unusual for there, but they tend to melt within a day. The first snow was overnight and didn't last the day. This one might hold slightly longer, deep!

The work area and driveway roof goes in this week, hopefully this is all melted by the time he starts working.

Attachment 37586

As expected, the driveway/work area roof won't go in until next week. We got a LOT more snow than normal, somewhere in the 10 times range! As of yesterday about 30cm deep.

Since the house construction lead is from Siberia, no surprise the roof isn't even straining. Also it's toasty warm in there to dry out the walls, insulation working well.

It's going to be warm over the weekend so it will all melt.

Attachment 37635

Attachment 37636

Still waiting for the roof install, the snow seems to have slowed things down. It's pretty much all melted now with sunny days ahead so...soon.

A truck showed up and brought all the big appliances, toilet, shower, to the new house so it's not quite as empty as before. While waiting, here's our Christmas + News Year's decorations there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiKPqCbniyI

Сегодня +7 и идёт дождь. Вот такая зима на Кубани.

Da, the snow was just a "little" deeper than normal. At least it doesn't stay around too long. 2020 is a year of "interesting" events.

Here's the house site on 2018-12-12

Attachment 37661

and here is was during the snow last week, 2020-12-21

Attachment 37662

and then yesterday looking out the bedroom window

Attachment 37663

Still waiting for the steel to arrive for the posts.

While waiting, here's a drone video of the house and area made by friends.

https://youtu.be/Qc2eWIfnZPA

Well, all the parts have been delivered and they're putting up the posts. I'll have pictures when they start putting the trusses up, they didn't feel like taking any of a pile of parts and posts in progress.

Хороший, большой и красивый дом.
Счастливого Рождества!! Счастья и благополучия в дом!!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Slim-123

Хороший, большой и красивый дом.
Счастливого Рождества!! Счастья и благополучия в дом!!

---

We asked for a modest house, but when you hire top people to do the work and they take it as an honor to be working for The American Engineers, they tend to go a bit on the fancy side. The floor plan mostly follows what we drew, although they refused to use American stair pitch...said it's too steep for their code so it took a week of redesigning to make a stairway fit. Of COURSE they hadn't mentioned the stair change until the walls were up (spaced to fit our American stairs) and they even had started putting in forms for what they were going to do. Nope, we eventually got a compromise approved that we can live with...just have to be careful to not fall down after having grown up with USA stair pitch.

There's also been a door moved, a window moved, things like that. But, overall it's our design (revision 42 or something).

The fireplace is a good example of "modest". In California we have a steel wood stove for extra heat, very efficient, low smoke, heats the whole house to WARM. We asked for either a steel stove or a Russian fireplace (with the chambers in it to extract heat). Well, they hired the top fireplace guy in S. Russia and we discussed some ideas, then he started building. And building. And when he was done he noticed he had more stones left so built some more. This DOES have interior chambers that I'm not allowed to discuss (trade secret), but here's the builder in front of his creation.

The fireplace is actually sunken into the wall to the outer layer of bricks, so it's around 40cm deep inside the wall plus what's in front of the wall.

Attachment 37757

Камин шикарный!!

Work is currently paused partway done, it's snowing AGAIN!

Finally, the show melted so they could start installing the cover.

As of yesterday they got the posts in between rainstorms. I hope they have drain holes in them! If not, we'll add ones when we get there.

Attachment 37900

FINALLY the snow melted enough for them to get back to work. Everything in Russia happens "soon", but one must understand the subtle meaning of "soon" (скоро).

They assure us snow like this shouldn't happen in this area. Glad to hear that but also glad the insulation and heating system was approved by people from Siberia.

After all this time in poorly insulated houses in America we're amazed that a 27 kW gas heater (92,000 BTU including domestic hot water) is keeping this 2600 square foot house comfortably warm. In California we have a lot bigger heater on a house with a heated area half that size (the shop IS heated in the new house).

Attachment 38087


Attachment 38088

PROGRESS!

Main roof up, side panels and track for hoist still need to go in as well as finishing the rain gutter. I'm sure the guys like working there a lot more since now they're out of the rain.

The work area (square-ish area in front of workshop) is about 16 feet wide x 13 feet deep. The porch will have a swing out railing to double as a loading dock.

Attachment 38178

Attachment 38179

Attachment 38180

Attachment 38181

Finally, got a dump of pictures from the construction. I'll just post links to not use up the site's AWS storage so loading might be a bit slower. These are out of order, sorry, it's the order I got them in. The track for the hoist came in today, our lead contractor vetoed the C track and so the fabricator had to get heavier T track. Not sure what they think I'm lifting, they have the hoist in hand and can easily read the max lift.

https://durandinterstellar.com/photo...ay_Roof-01.jpg


https://durandinterstellar.com/photo...ay_Roof-02.jpg


https://durandinterstellar.com/photo...ay_Roof-03.jpg


https://durandinterstellar.com/photo...ay_Roof-04.jpg


https://durandinterstellar.com/photo...ay_Roof-05.jpg


https://durandinterstellar.com/photo...ay_Roof-06.jpg


https://durandinterstellar.com/photo...ay_Roof-07.jpg


https://durandinterstellar.com/photo...ay_Roof-08.jpg


https://durandinterstellar.com/photo...ay_Roof-09.jpg


https://durandinterstellar.com/photo...ay_Roof-10.jpg


https://durandinterstellar.com/photo...ay_Roof-11.jpg


https://durandinterstellar.com/photo...ay_Roof-12.jpg


https://durandinterstellar.com/photo...ay_Roof-13.jpg


https://durandinterstellar.com/photo...ay_Roof-14.jpg


https://durandinterstellar.com/photo...ay_Roof-15.jpg


https://durandinterstellar.com/photo...ay_Roof-16.jpg


https://durandinterstellar.com/photo...ay_Roof-17.jpg


https://durandinterstellar.com/photo...ay_Roof-18.jpg


https://durandinterstellar.com/photo...ay_Roof-19.jpg


https://durandinterstellar.com/photo...ay_Roof-20.jpg


https://durandinterstellar.com/photo...ay_Roof-21.jpg

Well, finally have updates.

They couldn't use the smaller box track due to the span so they went to an I-beam. Fair enough, seems large but ok.

Attachment 38702


And they picked a trolley that looked good to them ... a big motorized one. NOOOOOOO!

Attachment 38703

The trolley is being returned, we'll make our own. What's the load rating on skate board wheels?