Instant wall! Instant shipping.
Let Amazo, fleabay or cheap offshore labor beat that!
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Instant wall! Instant shipping.
Let Amazo, fleabay or cheap offshore labor beat that!
the East wall is coming along nicely actually except for continuing to complete the full height of it the wall is as far as it is going to be since the entire remaining area will be a pair of 22 ft wide doors I am thinking that as soon as I finish the repairs on the trailer in the shop I will build the west wall which will be 20 feet of wall and a single 48 ft wide door.
To most the size of the doors I am wanting is probably mind boggling but you have to remember I live in farm country more importantly cotton and Hay are the principal crops the equipment can be huge. Just today 3 tractors drove by with their attachments folded they still took up the entire road and part of the easement on both sides and were bout 15 feet tall. try to imagine needing a place to work on one of those inside during the winter that is why the front door is going to be 48 feet wide and 17 feet high
Attachment 36617
I have a couple of tools that I thankfully don't need very often, but that doesn't take away from them being extremely valuable when I do need them.
The problem with both of them is they lay flat on the floor taking up lots of space not that I mind that so much as my shop and storage areas are large anyway. However since they are only around 7 inches tall they either get shoved under something but still stick way out in the way or I am constantly having to find a more suitable place to store them hopefully out of the way. most places in a shop that is out of the way winds up being a repository for anything and everything that needs stored out of the way meaning these tools wind up on the bottom of a stack of somethings.
Well I think I solved that issue today once and for all I hung them up like pictures on the wall 1 weighs around 200 lbs while the other weighs around 75 lbs
Attachment 36618
The only bad thing I can think of now is everyone who visits my shop will see a pair of transmission jacks hanging on the wall and will assume that I am willing to repair their transmission
Not many around me who would even know what to do with one of them if they did ask to borrow.
There are only 2 guys in the whole county who I would lend them to anyway. 1 is a car mechanic in town he runs the only state and DOT inspection place in the county. he has seen them and thought if ever he needed to pull a transmission that required the larger of the 2 the truck was going tob e delivered to me instead of his place
The other guy lives about a mile from me he and I often trade hours with each other he is a diesel mechanic /welder / sometime machinist so we have a few things in common I borrowed his transmission jack once then built my own large one for the next time I needed to use a jack he somehow over loaded his jack and blew the seals so I let him borrow mine as mine is also larger by capacity than his, his jack being only 2000 lb and mine will lift 4000 easy.
Have made some real progress on the North wall
Attachment 36683
Now there's more between you and the North Pole than a few strands of barb wire. Just in time too.
I thought I read in a previous post about insulating the wall. Is that some sort of rigid foam board?
Yes you can see the start of it in post #199
We installed the roof over the stairway today
Attachment 36695
This picture shows the start of the insulation
Attachment 36696
Getting a few more things done while I have a helper
yesterday we got half of the drop roof installed between the shop and the Machine shop van then this morning we completed that section
I had another 8ft by 25 ft gate that was just begging to be used on the shop
This also used up all but 2 ft of the remaining standing seam panel I had by welding short sections together to make a gutter
Attachment 36728
then after that we moved back to the North side of the building and worked on the stairway enclosure
Attachment 36729
Attachment 36730
Getting it done. Looking good to Frank!
Got the end cap on the west wall finished except for the flashing
Attachment 36732
Since the west wall will be a 48 ft wide roll up curtain door there is not a lot left to do to it maybe 20 ft and the remainder of the stairway
Well I guess this means the shop must be done now.
I needed to make a run to town today so by the time I got back I really didn't want to climb scaffolding, deciding to give my knees a day off Eddy and I hung the front door then we chained it closed and bolted the chain from the inside so now no one can enter the shop without climbing up and going through a window on the bus
Attachment 36745
Admiring the deceptive murals surrounding said door; I'm sure it will vex trespassers and miscreants...
Kinda reminds me of a bear outhouse.
Attachment 36755
Long ago, I recall stories of men building boats in their basement. Only later did chink in the plans appear; without means to extricate said project from under their house.
This is different, no-one recollects any bus on a shelf....
But it's one hell of a dual glazed set of windows! Terrific indirect and glare free lighting too. Or charge admission for tourists to see a real American shop in operation.
Last one not so unusual, I toured a woodworking furniture factory quite like that. It occupies a big abandoned but renovated church. The vaulted ceiling makes room for an elevated walkway, a balcony to see operations in their entirety.
Back around 1980 while I was building an oil drill rig behind this guys shop he was building a natural gas sub station compressor inside his shop. To give a little perspective of his shop it was maybe all of a 40x40 concrete tilt wall building with 14 ft ceiling it had 2 garage doors only 8 feet wide and maybe all of 9 feet high. I walked in the shop one morning to find his guys welding a skid together that was 20 feet long and 12 feet wide. I'm thinking Houston you are going to have a problem but since at the time it was none of my concern I ignored it. A few hours later a cement truck showed up and they filled the skid with concrete.
This is really going to be interesting I was thinking.
weeks later they have this thing just about built and it is almost all the way to the ceiling as well.
Only then did the owner come to me and ask what I thought would be the best way to get it out of the building.
Well George, as I see it you have only 2 options well actually 3 but the 3rd one wouldn't suit your customer. plan A you knock down a section of the tilt wall and drag the thing out with a dozer, plan b you remove the roof and lift it out with a 100 ton crane. Plan A might mean the roof could collapse and plan B might mean you drop it
what's plan "C" he asked? you sell the place to the customer and they turn this shop into a natural gas substation by routing their pipeline through town.
He opted for plan A and wound up with a 16 ft wide 14 ft tall door
Which is one of the reasons why I will have a 48ft wide door on the front it will be next to impossible to build anything inside that will be too large to get out of the building, that and the fact that lots of farm equipment can be 40 plus feet wide if it can not be folded up due to malfunctions the height plus the size makes this building worth 10 times more in an estate sale for after I'm gone
With each passing day the building becomes more and more of a structure edging closer to being a closed in building. When I start thinking about the eventual population of equipment and projects it has started to make me wonder if I may not be coming claustrophobic already thinking of where I will score more materials from to increase the size of it.
NA Just kidding. Once it is completed and the eventual slab is poured, which will have to be after several good paying projects are run through it, I know it will be a tight squeeze for some of the projects to be brought in and they will have to be on a time in and time out basis to keep the clutter down but aside from a sand blasting shed and an environmentally stable paint booth large enough to fit something like a bus in the size of the shop is pretty much what it is.
Today we tackled the East wall and end cap I ran out of flashing and a friend is bringing me a roll in a couple of days other wise the East is ready for doors
Attachment 36795
Epic.
No other suitable term applies.
In the past few weeks we have watched pile after pile of materials diminish and in some cases completely disappear.
It is hard to believe or even imagine that at one time with the exception of 5 pipes 4 I beams and a stack of purlin all of the materials for this building was hauled here as salvaged materials. I would have barely been able to have built a bare bones 2 car garage for the amount of cash I've spent on this thing.
Being in the right place at the right time to harvest that original building helped.
But it's your sweat equity to do all the work to dismantle and haul away, and erect at your site, that enabled this.
Your support columns are clever in using scrap wheels and drill piping, and knowledge of clay subsoil mixed with cement.
Delivered concrete has gotten crazy over the years. That is a minor hurtle to you.
I have been watching several different auctions again lately.
The thought of eventually needing well over 100 yards of concrete plus the distance to the nearest plant has started me thinking about the possibility of maybe finding an old but working portable batch plant. a screed, power trowels and all other needed article's then once the pour and any additional slabs are done sell everything.
My reckoning is I could probably cut the cost of my slab by 70% even with hiring labor. Plus who knows if folks within 10 to 15 miles of me knew I had a batch plant I could wind up needing to provide small amounts to them to be hauled in a 1 1/2 or 2 yard trailer. I used to rent them all the time and they are nothing to build
You think big with getting your own batch plant!
At my local home supply, 1cuft bag of cement is ~$10. How much is that bulk I wonder. I think the current price of concrete delivered here locally is $160-$180/cu.yd. It was $48/yd in 1988 the last time I had it delivered. And that's made with crushed limestone aggregate, which is too soft in my opinion (and why the life cycle of roads here is short, as it is porous to the salt water in the winter, and freeze-thaw spalling is common). I paid extra to have washed river gravel from igneous rock used. But under the entire state is only limestone near the surface. The mix is a 6bag per yd of cement to make the strength yield using limestone.
Hey, Frank S, metric_taper;
you guys should check out homemadetools.net. People there lap this kind of thinking like big bowls of lime sherbet.
Ohh, wait a minute....
Like Iowa, our soils can be poor support to concrete pours. The perimeter of my building is unpaved, floor is acceptable, but really want [need] 4' under my DeVlieg. That's about 18 yards. There also is a walkway/ forklift ramp needing rebuilt.
While getting a personal batch plant is thinking big, there are potential customers afterward. I see them likely completely unaware there a truck shop and machining facility of considerable size connected to it. A safe bet is 10-or 15 miles is 1/3 or 1/4 the possible customer radius. One then feeds the other.
That's basis of my intent, instead of concrete I'll rent hard to find tools. Very low cost, high deposit, and agreement guarantees they have NO liability protection. Two pages of 8.5" x 14" legal boiler-plate un-needed, a simple "Receipt of this warrants user has no recourse to injury or property damage, public or private."
.......but then "Shall not be infringed" is unclear to some, and over past several decades.
Progress on the shop may, or I should say will slow down for a while. Today was the last day I had my helper from out of town also we have exhausted most if not all of the long sheets of sheet metal. And for the second time in a week we have ran out of screws again. When he arrived I had a bag of 750 then bought another 200 then another 500 and we might have had 3 left when we quit at noon today.
I think I'll order another 1000 next week rather than pay the high prices of the hardware stores within 75 miles of me.
Here is what we did this morning
Attachment 36810
It has been a lot of years since I have found the bulk deals I used to find but at one time I bought a freight tanker load of bulk Portland for ten dollars a ton at a derailment site. I hired 3 dry bulk vacuum tankers to pump it out of the freight tanker. However stupid me, I sold the cement to a batch plant for a huge profit, instead of thinking that 20 years later I might need it for my own slab
It would probably be a solid chunk if you stored it that long, but maybe you have some water vapor proof storage vessels. It screams to be hydrated. I've learned that even the bags that have a plastic film between the paper structural sheets, let moister in. Really disappointing when you find the 3 bags you got on sale are solid. And absolutely do not store on concrete as that exudes moister, and keeps the cement below dew point (the lesson was delivered this way). So I shall see in a few weeks if storing the left over bags in a dry wall mud pails with a sealed lid keeps it dry. That was 3 years ago. I have a critical repair task of my storage building, that is 3 feet from a retaining wall, about 3 feet high. The wall is tilting outward and letting the sand below the building slump along with this. The building is on a concrete slab, made from that crappy limestone aggregate, that I mixed myself. The freeze thaw is making that slab punky. Soft enough that a ground hog (marmot) dug through it 3 years ago, and undermined the building and filled the floor area it could with 2 feet of the earth from below the building. I hate ground hogs, and they are my enemy. And as this building is above the surrounding area this attracts them for a winter home that is dry. They have some instinct that knows the winter melt will fill a den if it can't drain out. I accidentally made a hill for them. They hibernate in our climate.
What I have is a 17 by 48 foot billboard tarp that I will attach at the top and attach a long heavy pipe at the bottom with flanges on each end to form cable spools. with cables wound around on the ends then up to a set of pulleys and over to a winch when I wind the winch the spools on the bottom of the door will unroll while rolling up the tarp. I could also add another feature by attaching some braces and stays then roll out the tarp as an awning canopy. This would be a huge PLUS in the summer afternoons.
Finding 3 bags of solidified quick set is disappointing enough. Imagine 3 tankers worth?
Three monoliths; each in the most unusable, oddly shaped, and significant size imaginable.
DAMHIKT...please.
I recall seeing a discarded cement truck mixing assembly that had concrete set up inside. I could only assume that the hydraulic motor rotating the drum failed, and there was no way to open the hatch door, rotate this to the bottom, and remove the contents. I bet there was cussing.
At one time, my fertile brain pondered why ready mix truck drums were so shaped.
Let fertile here also mean too young for sorting out that stuff. Seems I was never too young to wonder or ask "Why?".
Besides center of gravity, sufficient volume without pouring out, keeping minimal surface exposed to air [drying too quick]; sometimes the tapers aid removal of a dried plug. Of course it has to be dismantled and circumferences torched open...Also told they keep sacks of rock salt in the cab in the event of trouble, to retard or throw the mix out of drying cycle, but ruins the load.
Frank S; I relinquish the floor....
A peremptory response to my DAMHIKT; ~ 2008 economic crisis [properly labeled, compared to COVID 19 'crisis'] I was laid off.
My region was a little distant from a real metro area and decent employment. I went to work fixing rail cars, which is considerable business around here. Anyway, two concrete chassis arrived with cement stuck to the walls, about 4" thick in places.
After freeing up the sliding dump shutters, guess who was smallest and newest to climb inside with sledge, engineer hammer and a few chisels...
Ohh the 08"s, such good times; brought to us by a bank who's name only gets mention as perpetrators.
I only know how much it set one family back, many caught up far, far worse.
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