2 car to 3 car garage via fire :eek:

In 2006 I had a fire from a battery charging a lithium battery. No one was hurt but my pride since we all know "IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN TO ME"

I posted some of this over in the Garage Sale section, but don't want to take over the thread.

A little about me;

New to this forum, very active on other forums. I found this looking for Lift options and settled on a scissors lift (on the way on a slow boat from china)

I have a 6, 9 and 11 year old and am about to retire, August 1st after 25 years as a Deputy Sheriff.

Wife is working now and I get to play, and be Mr. Mom

I like to fix anything really, but like guns, cars, radio control aircraft and anything can be made better

To many projects but the Garage was a major job, done in my "spare time" over the last 6 years or so and one day it will be finished, already occupied

Anyway I had a nice little 2 car garage that was never really enough. Had plans to build it bigger, but never really got past that. One day I charge a battery and go to work, get a call and wife says there's a fire in the garage. she opened the garage door (I know, she didn't) and called the fire dept.
They arrived after me and I was 5 minutes away and saw the smoke as I got close. Attic was open so it gutted the garage less the walls, but the sheet rock did its job for the house. Firemen still cut the house apart and put us in a hotel for 6 months just for water, smoke and fire dept damage

2 good things, no one was hurt and I was very well insured (never can have to much)

So here is a picture of the house before and then the fire. There is at least 30K of damage to tools not including the home. All in all over 100k in insurance.

Last picture is what she looks like today, then I will post a few of the fire, the rebuild and what I have now. Always looking to improve as I have about maxed out this lot, but looking at land out of state since KALI is not as friendly to us as it used to be.

Eek, is right . I dont thing anybody like's to see fire damage photo's, but the good thing is no one was hurt.

Looking forward to seeing the upgrade photo's.

Well, first of all, welcome to The Garage and second , that *****! I don't know whats up with garage fires lately. Last night I was reading another thread about a garage fire, this morning I wake up to sirens, a neighbors garage fully engulfed and now your pics. Kinda gettin the creeps. Needless to say, while at Home Depot this afternoon I picked up a 10lb, rechargeable fire extinguisher. I already have 4 in the garage, another can't hurt. Your neighborhood looks almost identical to mine, are you in North County? Yes, California is starting to piss me off too, but being born & raised in SoCal it's tough to leave. So bring on the pics of your new garage (we like pics here).

Tough way to get a new garage, but it looks like you got a nice upgrade!

Thanks for the welcome guys, heres a little more.

The damage the FD causes sometimes makes you wonder. Plus they grab what they can of what they think are your "valuables" are and toss them on the bed to save. Funny thing is the house didn't nor should any signs of fire.

Then they remove all the stuff from where the was and pile it up to be sure it is out.

Cars in the driveway get cooked (saturn melted).

That is a CNC mill, german made in pretty bad shape.

Toolbox, mig welder, alum head

Very nice rebuild. Looks fantastic!

Glad you were well insured.

Makes me think I need to go in and take a hard look at my coverage since I work with a lot of the same stuff. Love those Li-Po's, but man are they tempremental and requires lots of respect.

Mind if I ask what levels of insurance you carried? I'm a (very) new homeowner, still trying to get all my ducks in a row.

Then after the shock, I was at the house everyday with the adjuster going over the loss. It was deemed an accident and I was part of the investigation (I have a little background in that).

Guys, check your insurance!! You cannot be over insured!! Be sure your insurance covers upgrades.

Then, 6 months in a hotel for the HOUSE we were back in.
So we were in the house, the garage had wood for the front and no roof. I made a quick frame and I had a tent over the roof that lasted a good year for the rebuild to begin.

Rebuilding after a fire is enough work, but like most of you, I had a vision. Well the vision went back a few years but the demo was just covered be not planned.

Then you get to draw plans, get approval, get an engineer and in my instance I had to pay to ask the neighbors if the "new design" was OK. So fees were paid, letters went out and all was OK until my gets a visit from the local PD. While I getting the package ready I took a few pictures of other houses with 2 story garages, seems at least one house was a daycare. SO, someone got nervous and reported someone taking pictures of the daycare home. Local PD were OK as many knew me already so that went away.

By the way, this is a year after getting back into the house. You can see the tarp over the garage, yard has gone to ****

sneasle said:

Glad you were well insured.

Makes me think I need to go in and take a hard look at my coverage since I work with a lot of the same stuff. Love those Li-Po's, but man are they tempremental and requires lots of respect.

Mind if I ask what levels of insurance you carried? I'm a (very) new homeowner, still trying to get all my ducks in a row.

Click to expand...

I have Farmers and went with their recommended coverage plus upgrades. It was barely enough and this was just the garage!! I have more now.

Lipos are great, but they were in their early days when this happened. It was an experimental 4s2p pack. I left it unattended charging on a wood shelf

Remember, "IT CAN"T HAPPEN TO ME"

My friend makes the Lipo Sack, yes THE Lipo Sack and I have plenty now.

yikes!

After the city red tape and seeing what is would run to build it, I decided to contract the cement and build myself. This was my first real structure besides a little shed in the back yard.

Of course I got to play on the tractor ( I paid for it) and my kids helped a little to.

Lots of cement came out and some DEEP footings where dug for the 2nd floor upright.

Nice, keep the update's coming......

Then after the cement and driveway were done, I actually put in a side door with a little help.

Great looking kids, and really glad no one was hurt in the fire. And this pic is great. Give a boy some nails and something to put them into, and his mind goes wild. If one could only see what he is thinking.

You made a comment about the firemen maybe doing more damage, than necessary or something like that. They have to do that to see if there are any hot spots. One day I was outside and saw smoke across the road at my neighbors, Her shed was on fire. And the shed was maybe 5-8 feet from the house. I yelled at the wife to call 911. I went over and told the elderly lady to get out of the house NOW that there was a fire. I asked her for her key and got her car out of the garage. I grabbed the garden hose and could have pissed a harder stream than that. But I could see the shed fire getting bigger and the siding on the house turning brown. I yelled at the wife to call 911 again to see how many minutes they were from getting there as the house was getting ready to burn. We live 5 minutes from the fire department. It took 15 for them to get there. Too late. Before they arrived, the eave of the house caught fire and was working its way down. The vinyl caught fire along with the subsiding.She also ran a beauty shop out of her house. Long bars and water from fire hoses make a hell of a mess. Luckily though everything was taken care of, and she didn't get hurt, and her insurance covered everything.

In talking with the detective, he asked me if I had any idea how it started. I did, and told him. I also told him to check the corn field. The woman's grandson lived with her. Him and another kid had been playing with matches in the dry cornfield, but luckily didn't catch it on fire. Once they started looking around the shed, they found where the fire had originated, and after putting the fear of God into the grandson, he admitted that he was playing with matched in the shed.

You're very lucky that the fire was contained to the garage as well as it was, and didn't reach the house per se. But smoke damage can be just as bad as far as ruining things. When my BIL had a garage fire from his JD catching on fire, it was about the same as yours. It was contained to the garage, but all sorts of smoke damage in the house. A company came in and sprayed all of the ceiling joist and rafters in the house portion to seal in the smoke smell. Once the house was put back together, there was not that first trace of smoke smell at all.

And I've told people quite a few times, and I'm glad you were on top of it, about insurance. In the event that you have equipment like the OP did......get an agent out there and get pics of everything. I can guarantee that most people that just pays insurance year after year and never has an agent out to go over things, has way more in value than what you realize. Just like the OP.....how many really knows whether your insurance will put you up in a hotel or not in the wake of a tragedy? Some will, some won't.

We went over all of our possessions a few months back, along with the buildings, and are now insured for about $100,000 more than what we initially had. But it takes a sit down with an agent, and preferably have the agent out to your house to go over things. An hour of your time and his time, may make all the difference whether you get things replaced or not.


FBJR.....the place looks great. What is the upstairs of the garage.....Storage, or a family room? Any inside pics of it you can show? Also did you get your CNC mill replaced along with a new lathe?

And again...very glad no one was hurt, and this is all behind you now. Enjoy your retirement, and enjoy those little ones

The upstairs is great and major plans for it too. All in good time,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Thx on the kids, they are awesome but bigger now (funny about that huh)

I understand why the FD does that, kinda like why I do things and then try to explain to the public or my wife even.

After the fire I even had to let this go. Had it since I was 18 just out of HS, but things change.

I got a quote of 20K just to frame up the thing. Now it was not small, 22x32 with upstairs.

So I still had a trusty HF framing hammer and thought, how hard could it be? So I blasted out the first wall (hey I watched Holmes on Homes) and said, I can do this!

So first wall went up and I went to the local Meeks for the lumber. They figured what I needed and delivered as I needed it. $6000 for all the framing and $6000 for the cement, sounded good to me.

That first wall was the hardest as I raised the ceiling (not enough) to just over 8 ft. and had to figure that in. Then I added 4x6's to the remaining walls to even here out.

Much of the work was at night after work and weekends. It was not framed up in a week, it was months. Sometime with help, most of the time not.

Oh, the front door was moved over too. Notice the first pics it was in the garage

Ok, lets get some wood delivered and ID that mount my son is putting screws in.

Meeks is right down the road from me and just delivered as I needed.

That mount attached to a 3/4 rod that went 3 ft under the old foundation to a new footing for shear since those doors up front don't let you shear as needed in Kalifornia.

Those are 14 inch engineered trusses going on 16 centers.

You can see the regular build on the left wall with just a standard top double 2x4 and the 4x6 added to the "old" garage cap to bring the height up.

Both garage door headers were glue lambs.

Boy, you guys are busy. Don't post for 3 days and I'm 5 pages back!!

Anyway, time for an update. Looks like a couple reading this. Been off for 2 weeks now and am busier than when I work fulltime.

That is coming to an end on June 20th though. Crunched the numbers and it will work vs Aug 1st.

You will notice that many of the pictures are during the night. I just seem to go that way for some reason. Most of this was done solo, with maybe a friend or neighbor helping with really big stuff (but not always)

You can see ramps and the things I worked around in the garage.

On the last pic you can see my Duramax LBZ that was my first new vehicle in over 30 years. She now has 97k miles and just developed the dreaded transfer case leak.

Those full shelves you see are still in the garage, with more on them. I did upgrade a few of the beams you see though.

Got the edging on and started with the flooring. Upgrades the floor from 5/8 to 3/4TG and it is screwed and glued. Plus on 16in centers, there are no squeeks!!

Used a HF framing gun for what ever really needed nails, everything else was a ryobe drill until I tried the impact Got to give the drill credit though, it was literally smoking sometimes with all those floor screws.

Going back to the topic of insurance, did you get supplemental insurance for your tools? I forget when I got my homeowners policy, but I think the limit on tools is 3k or 5k without a rider?

Of course, we had to have some rain early in the season as you can see by the tarps. Good and bad of course;

Floor was dead level (that is correct right?) so the rain did not want to run off.

Bad was where the old pitch roof ran into the garage edge and caused many problems. In fact I had to rebuild and pitch the house roof later to remedy this, but was planned, really it was!!

rice rocket said:

Going back to the topic of insurance, did you get supplemental insurance for your tools? I forget when I got my homeowners policy, but I think the limit on tools is 3k or 5k without a rider?

Click to expand...

All the tools were covered with no issues. Lathe, CNC mill and everything I could ID. I did top out the policy though.

Now we are coming to a real good part, the center beam. This was designed around an open upstairs with NO TRUSSES and gave me a 16x22 ft room. Access (AT THIS TIME) is a pull down stairs.

This is where all the footings (3ft under the old footing) came into play to support this thing. The center beam was to be a nice glue-lam, but meeks lost it!!!!

But they came through and replaced it with a Versalam, that is even stronger and included all the specs to keep the city happy.

So how do you get a 6x16in x 26 ft beam on the second floor another 8 ft in the air???????????

That upright support had a sister up in the front. Both naturally had to basically have support straight down to the foundation. The engineer only charged a little over a grand to certify the plans for this thing.

Plus that beam ad to be beveled on top to match pitch. I rolled it around on 2 HF dollies until it was ready to go up.

Then it was, how do I get that thing up there without getting an army to help, not to mention it was late=dark.

So I got a couple 2x4s, a HF winch and a 12v battery and did this;

First 1 side, then the other ( Is that the right way) and it was 2am, figured I had a good day, er night and didn't get hurt.

By the time I cleaned up a little it was getting light.

Man, you guys are tuff. Back to page 10 already

Anyway, started to add a few walls when the rain would stop. You find out just how level you are this way though. The water just sat there until I removed the tarps.

Couldn't really build the walls from plans, just sorta took a measurement from a-b after the pitch "looked right" and did a few.

Great work!

Kudos to you for all that work!

Welcome to GJ. Glad to hear nobody was hurt. I was going to ask if it was a Li-Po battery as though things will take down a city block if they go bad, but I see it was in later posts.

Nice vision and sounds like a long road to rebuilding, but glad it is turning out well.

-Terracar

Glad no one was hurt....you just taught me a lesson on charging my batteries over night or any battery at all (i get paranoid easily).

looking good on the progress and from 2 to 3 car garage! what a dream!

Yes it was a Lithium Polymer pack, still use em too. Just never charge unattended.

Lipos are less dangerous than that gallon or so of gas everyone has laying around.

Guess a little update would be nice

After the main beam it took shape fast.

As you can see, the rain was coming and going and the tarp was a requirement.

Easy to roll out though, er down.

The overhang is 24 inches wide as are the supports, which go in 3 rafters that are spaced at 16 inches, yes overbuilt

Guess I should at least put up the final pics. Here she is all finished up. Now working on inside stairs and another room in back.

Since all this, I have retired, put in a pool with a paver deck (between surgery)

Got slowed down from an ankle rebuild (screws, tendons and 3 months of really not using it at all.