Re: The Lone Beech Garage Build Thread (60x46)
Thursday - October 29, 2015
This morning I drove from Peachtree City, GA to Tucker, GA (from south of Atlanta to Northeast of Atlanta) which is a distance of about 48 miles. The purpose of the trip was to pick up a 15'-9" S12 x 31.8 beam from Steel Mart and bring it back to my home. This beam will serve as a hanging point for an electric chain hoist.
We had purchased our other steel (30 foot W18 x 35, angle iron, etc.) from Sable Steel in Newnan, GA. Sable Steel is about 20 miles away from my home and is located in what appears to be an incomplete Industrial/Commercial zoned development. Sable's location would be described as quiet, low traffic and easy to get in and out of their parking lot.
Unfortunately, Sable didn't have the S12 beam in stock and we would have had to order a truckload in order to get one from them.
Steel Mart would let us get the single S12 x 31.8 and cut it to 15'-9" from the 20' beam we had to buy. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I elected to save the $100 delivery charge and pick the beam up myself.
It wasn't just the delivery charge I was thinking about. Based on the experience we had with the earlier beam delivery, I didn't know what would happen when this latest beam was delivered. I assumed getting this new beam off the delivery truck would be similar to the last delivery... we'd have to figure out how to remove it from the truck. That would be after sitting around for several hours waiting on the delivery. By picking up the beam myself, I would at least control my own destiny.
My plan was to leave my house at about 9:00 am and catch the tail end of Atlanta rush hour traffic: Pick up the beam at Steel Mart and return around 10:30 am in the quietest day-time traffic Atlanta has to offer.
The trip to Steel Mart was about as expected. Heavy traffic but not bad. As I approached Steel Mart's address, I was a bit surprised to find it to be a heavily retail-commercial area on a 4-lane highway. Of course my destination was on the left side of the street that I was traveling on.
The entrance to Steel Mart was a rather narrow gap in a fence that fed into barely two lanes that threaded between two warehouse-type buildings. Of course as soon as one cleared the highway and entered the Steel Mart property, there was an office that you would need to get paperwork from in order to make your pick-up.
Remember the "barely two lanes that threaded..." above? Remember "office"?
Of course some lazy twit had stopped his truck in this bottleneck in order not to have to walk 50 yards to the paperwork office. As you might expect under this scenario, a truck is trying to leave as I'm arriving and the trailer I'm dragging behind me, while just clear of traffic, is probably protruding a bit into the shoulder of the highway I had just left.
Quite a different experience from Sable Steel in Newnan, GA!
Survived that and got the almost 16 foot beam and the cut-off piece loaded onto my 12 foot trailer. Back to PTCGA I went - traffic was light and I got home at about 11:40 am.
I parked my load and made ready for a meeting with the builder and the electrical sub which was to take place at noon.
After the meeting, I wanted to unload the trailer. The beam wasn't going to be needed for a while so I pulled the trailer into the back yard and came up with a plan to unload the 500 pound beam by myself.
Since the beam hung off the trailer by about 4 feet. I jacked up the end hanging off the trailer and built a pillar to support that end of the beam.
Then I jacked up the end on the front of the trailer and slid a homemade "low boy" dolly that I've had forever under the beam. [The reason for the odd shape of the dolly is that its original purpose was to slide under a massive entertainment center.] With the beam resting on the dolly, I drove the truck and trailer forward.
With the dolly right on the end of the trailer, I jacked up the beam and built another pillar to support that end of the beam.
With the beam resting on the pillars, I drove the truck and trailer away from the beam. I used the jack to raise up each end of the beam, remove a layer of the pillar and lower the beam down a step at a time.
The whole time I was doing this, I was distracted by "the sound of freedom" as the US Navy Blue Angels practiced overhead for their performance this weekend at the Great Georgia Air Show. I'm surprised I didn't hurt myself trying to unload this beam AND catch a glimpse of the F-18's through the pine trees that surround my property.
Edit: These 2 pictures of the Blue Angels were taken on the day following this post. They were out practicing again and I was ready for them with my camera! I still had the problem of trying to locate them through the trees. Ha!
Scott