Took the first step towards building my shop

[Frank S]

Actually a dry mix batch plant is little more than silos or storage units to hold the Portland cement and other chemicals added to a mix which determines the plasticity of the pour the amount of time a mix can remain in the mixer drum accelerants for faster cure rates and a host of other things added in very small quantities, plus a pair of conveyors to haul sand and aggerate up for pouring back down into a mixer truck where water is then added to the mix. The heart of an operation such as a wet plant is a mixer drum often very large ones at that but most of the wet plants or portable batch plants that I have seen use a drum or an old mixer truck which is no longer suitable for highway use. Those will just sit there and turn mixing the concrete the pouring into tippers or loaders or even powered wheel barrows which transport short distances usually staying on the same property to the pour of the day.
In many countries where it can be very hot or there are long distances to be traveled or long travel times due to road and traffic conditions the mixer trucks will have a 3 to 500 gallon water tank mounted on them in addition to their drum these will leave the dry batch plant then start to mix near or at their destination or wait in line turning the dry contents until it is time for them to wet up . A project I was involved with in Oman had not only a huge dry batch plant but over 100 mixer trucks on site and 5 pumper rigs. the mixer trucks would start loading for the next days pour at their companies batch plants sometime in the night the days pour started at around 4 AM and by days end nearly all trucks would have visited the on site batch plant at least twice Huge screeds would spread the pumped concrete dozens of ride on power trowels worked feverously throughout the day. 100s of whip vibrators would be pushed up and down the footing and wall forms. Miles upon miles of plastic sheeting would be stretched over the slabs and 1000s of workers were so tired you would wonder if they would show up the next day. many wouldn't

[Toolmaker51]

Actually a dry mix batch plant is little more than silos...<snipped>

Is it just me? Always fascinated at how knowing fragments of another vocabulary [as here with concrete construction] make such a description, well, perfectly descriptive? Played out visually, that would be not as clear, and depending on film editors knowledge, probably not proper order.

That old saw about one picture equalling X number of words is not exactly true...

And one more; when our deligated donkey's posterior tries telling us the 'service industry' is basis for a strong economy.
K, read this. Try estimating how many contracts were cut to build, place and operate this plant; just the first time. How many re-riggings did it take for ROI?
You cannot copy, print and staple an economy. But they can stay home during a pandemic of hype.

[Frank S]

Worked some on the stairway today
the landings and treads are in place. I ran out of 2x12s so for now the top 4 steps are 3 2x4s each
Now I have to get the walls and railings up so no one can miss step and fall

[metric_taper]

Worked some on the stairway today
the landings and treads are in place. I ran out of 2x12s so for now the top 4 steps are 3 2x4s each
Now I have to get the walls and railings up so no one can miss step and fall

Watch out for the building code police.......Oh, I forget, you're in the free state of Texas.

[Frank S]

Watch out for the building code police.......Oh, I forget, you're in the free state of Texas.

Texas has its share of liberals and NIMBYs I assure you. Fortunately I live far enough away from any city that if enough nukes were dropped to wipe out every city larger than 50,000 in the state the fall out might not even reach my place. Not that I am advocating for anything but Texas could loose 25 million of its population and the rest of the world might never realize they are gone since only 3.8 million do anything productive anyway.

[metric_taper]

Texas has its share of liberals and NIMBYs I assure you. Fortunately I live far enough away from any city that if enough nukes were dropped to wipe out every city larger than 50,000 in the state the fall out might not even reach my place. Not that I am advocating for anything but Texas could loose 25 million of its population and the rest of the world might never realize they are gone since only 3.8 million do anything productive anyway.

I don't think building code enforcement is a liberal issue, it is from developers and construction trades bribing government with "campaign donations", to force DIY'ers to hire out work, as well the tax assessor arm wanting more property tax. All this is independent of political ideologies, and more into the power of county, city, state, federal elected clowns building up overgrown government. They want you and I to pay for their grave stone epitaph.
That's how I see it working. Smart people do not run for elected office, they run their own business, as you can't make intelligent decisions arguing with idiots, and you don't do that with left or right ideologies, but with risk aversion management to maximize ROI. So we are left with morons that want to win a popularity contest, with a big ego. And then they take the bribes and continue inept government operations.

[Frank S]

Wednesday I started to move some dirt to fill in the low spot in the corner of the shop but before I could do that I had to remove the fork carriage and install the loader bucket. Sometimes this is a mere 30 to 45 minute job or even less but other times things just never seem to fall in place as they ordinarily would. Most of this is my fault for getting in a rush to do the change over or where I had decided to do it. This was one of those times I had moved the bucket with the forks and did not have it sitting level after removing the fork carriage then trying to align the loader arms with the pin locations it took the better part of an hour to get the change over accomplished then even more time to locate 2 of the snap rings in the sand and grass burs that had gone ballistic when I removed them.
Anyway I moved a dozen of so loads of dirt to fill in a low spot to make it easier for me to enter the shop from an area I normally didn't go through then I mined a large pile of the select fill. Things were going fine running up and down the haul road a little too fast at times I guess because the backhoe was bouncing sometimes
The used tire I had installed on the rear a few months ago was a lower pressure rating than the original and the rubber was old and probably well beyond an age for tubeless mounting. I entered the area where I had the fill mounded up at a wrong angle ran over a hard out cropping not sharp just a large bump that was when the dreaded hissing sound started grabbing a load of select fill I headed back up the hill to the shop and just barely made it to be able to dump before the tire went completely flat.
OK I have a second tire I'll just install it I thought but I will tube it in an attempt to stave off rupturing the inner bladder of the next tire.
So that night I ordered a new tube which was not going to arrive until next Tuesday. OK fine I will work on other projects then this time take the tire and rim to my tire man and let him wrestle the change.
Well the tube arrived yesterday afternoon late So once again I decided not to wait until I could load everything up and take it to town. half the work of changing the tire would be removing the rim from the machine and re installing it anyway.
But since I already had it off the backhoe laying on the ground and a new tube in hand and it being Saturday the tire guy wouldn't be at work until Monday I broke it down and started installing the equally old replacement tire.

Inspector Whitey wondering where her new favorite sleeping spot had gone

way too much 4 legged help

[metric_taper]

At least you're not dealing with fluid filled tires. That would make this much more fun. So the latest here (operating below freezing) is they use beet juice, as brine with a slow leak would eat the rim. I have such a failure waiting for me to find a new rim.

[Frank S]

DOWN:
after sliding the beam in place there was little left to do but see if my hard work was going to pay off
I started out rolling only a few feet at a time then checking everything

GONE but not in 60 seconds LOL

the best and probably the safest way to down work the cribbing that I've found is to set up a second set of cribbing inside for the jack. This allows the layers to be lowered in small stages and if something happens to slip there is only a few inches anything can fall I like to lower 3 inches at a time across a 12 ft span side to side





then after lowering a section or 2 I can drop the rear by a couple sections or more at a time

DOWN;

I will probably have to use a cigarette paper to chink the gap before calking LOL

Level enough until I have it on the concrete blocking pads


Look the steel genie left me something

[Frank S]

Fully up on blocks with the beam in place now I have to remove the chassis which still could be a chore