They turned out great the guy was happy with them mostly because they were all the correct sizes to fit the mountings and all of the fittings aligned up where they were supposed to be
Printable View
Almost there.
I might have to add another 5 yards of fill to finish out the floor
then I will need to make a leveling drag spray the surface with water cut the high spots allow the low spots to fill then roll the surface
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When you want to put up a wall that eventually will need to become a window so the brick crane can operate around and through it what better way yo build a wall then use a side tarp off of a Conestoga trailer kit.
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Almost an instant wall, well it did take an hour to hoist the 200lb tarp in position and screw in in place
Had a trailer load of stuff arrive last night.
Some will be for the shop some needs to be repaired some will be moving on to another place
and some just because I wanted it
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the dog has the right idea
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so now I get a post hole digger
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everyone needs a 15 KW PTO driven generator Right?
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This used to be a 4 post Globe 5000lb cable driven car lift
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Over 2 years of adding the red sandy clay fill to the shop floor and it being packed down over and over had turned it almost into sand stone.
But now it is time to break it up for the next step in the process of making it into a durable floor that hopefully will not sluff off dust everytime something hard is dragged across it To do this the fill must first be broken up.
the rake Eddy was dragging behind his little tractor would scratch and scratch and eventually do a pretty good job but not nearly deep enough.
My leveling drag blade was too un wieldy in the confined area given its size plus it would just drag over the super hard spots.
I tried my tandem disk and this broke up some of the area quite well but I needed to bare down with so much force I was destroying it and still couldn't make it penetrate the really hard spots very well.
Even using the teeth on the back hoe bucket took all day to do less than 1/3 of the floor but at least with a lot of banging and only taking short gouging cuts each time it is finally being loosened into large rock like clods that should break up more easily
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The floor is broken into large clods but while we wait for the enzyme to arrive the decision was made to try and complete the walls
Today we closed in a section of the East wall that I was going to make into a door instead but decided to use the right opening instead of the left
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This is now how the East side of the shop looks
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The shop has never been this empty even before it was built
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It has been a busy week around the shop in getting the floor prepared.
After breaking it up with the backhoe like we did, we decided rather than me buying a 1950's era seaman pulvermixer, (To do so I would have had to hedge against some future truck and trailer repairs then most likely have to spend some time making sure it ran IE batteries possibly tires, hydraulic hoses and what ever else may or may not be wrong with the tractor like I really need another tractor that needs repaired right now anyway.)
That's not saying that I may not think about getting it in the future or going in with Bob to get it so we could use it as a very large rototiller as well as a means to clearing out and grinding up a forest of small saplings of china berry and dwarf scrub oak so several acres could be seeded in native grasses for possible future grazing. Or possibly even renting it out or selling it to recoup funds once it would no longer be needed. Heck it would make a great garden tiller as long as it were a big garden.
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Eddy figured and I agreed that time and effort would be better spent by hiring a guy with a tractor tiller to come in and turn the floor into flour would be cheaper than if we rented one and did the job ourselves. Turns out it was probably the best decision. Knowing now what just renting a roller to pack things back down after he tilled it up for us and we spread the stabilizing mixture using my pickup with 600 gallons of water on board and the spray bar we made to distribute the mix . If we would have had to rent a tractor tiller the roller and hauled them it would have cost way more in money time and transportation. Plus we got to stand and watch the horribly long boring job of trying to turn the nearly concrete like clay sand fill I had put packed in the shop into the consistency of flour.
after the guy had been grinding away for over half the day
6 hours of tilling
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after spraying
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After many hours of driving a vibratory roller and many miles of driving a pickup back and forth
the floor is not perfectly flat or smooth but way better than some old slab floors I have had to work on
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I've seen concrete floors too that weren't near that good. Maybe when it packs down hard again you can roll things on it with metal wheels.