Garage build thread.

[JackB]

Hello everyone
I am newly registered on this forum, altough I have been looking at a few threads on and off for more than a year, maybe 2 or 3 years too, hard to rememeber.
I have bought a house with enough land to build a garage, so now I am wondering if anyone is interested in a thread about the construction of the garage. All in favour say "I".
The size ramains to be seen (here) but it must have room for at least two cars parked at the same time. And room to work on one of them too. Chances are it will have room for other things too

 

[Cougar]

I.................

 

[collegejeeper21]

I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I,

No, really... we want to see it!

 

[BEAVO]

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII this is a garage fourm you think we wont want to see a garage build

 

[JackB]

You got a very good point the Beavo
I will start out with the floorplan. I have been making a lot of different designs over the last years but I ended up with the one shown below. I had another good alternative too which was shallower and had more car places side by side and was meant to be most concrete poured on-site. Anyway: Concrete is expensive so I went with a mostly wood structure.
In the early design phase of the version I am building I had a toilet and an office in it too but they were scrapped in favor of a larger room to the upper left. What it will contain will soon be revealed
The room in the lower left corner is for compressor and things like that.

 

[JackB]

Here is the drawing of the building from the front to show height and some design principles. The concrete floor sides was done almost like the detail in the lower center, and not like in the drawing. There were a number of reason for that: Among others was the number of pours needed and the ease of form-making. The stability is the same IMO. The only drawback is that the floor is not insulated against the walls, which makes for slower response heating system.

 

[BEAVO]

You got a very good point the Beavo
What it will contain will soon be revealed
The room in the lower left corner is for compressor and things like that.

what are the demensions of the garage and can you give us a hint on whats going on the room

 

[JackB]

The garage is about 40x40' (12x12m) - outside dimensions. The free height in the main room is close to 12'(3,6m).
Hint.. difficult without giving it away but it is not difficult to guess really
The little door into the main room is not happening. I figured it would just be in the way as that's the main access to the garage.

 

[BEAVO]

ok a lift lol but what are you putting in the room in the top left of the pic

 

[JackB]

Lathe & milling machine and any other machinery that is too big for the main room.
Lift would be nice, I am looking for a used one.

 

[JackB]

There was a huge amount of used wood/timer under som roofing metal just where the garage was going:

At the time I was in a hurry to start digging so this is how it was disposed of :

It could probably have been cut up into firewood but there might have been a lot of nails and some of it was used for concrete forms. None of which is especially good for saw blades or chains...
The trees that were stading along the fence was cut up for firewood though. Which will be seen in a later picture.
So: After about 2 days of work the ground was ready for digging:

Materials arrived a little early. The reason for that was a price increase that I didn't want to be a part of.

 

[JackB]

Onto the digging a few days later. The digger was rented for a small fee from a a guy I know. The tractor and trailer belonged to a friend of mine and me. Didn't have do drive the excatvated material too far. Maybe 5minutes for a roundtrip to another part of my land where i filled in a little.

After we had dug out everything there was a quite a bit of rock so I had a guy come over and blast that away. He also used his large digger to spread the rock out evenly for the basis of the road up to the garage. Then put down the white fabric to separate gravel from the dirt underneath. Sadly no pictures was taken of that it seems. There is also no pictures of drainage pipes or anything under the gravel. The ground was very wet because of a natural spring in the rocks to the back of the garage.
Here's two pictures of how it looked after all the gravel was delivered. About 25 truck loads I think.

 

[JackB]

Fast forward through all the drainage and piping etc, to the ground insulation.
Before the insulation the gravel was compacted by a 700kg compacter.
Then lots of packages of extruded polystyrene. There is a layer of plastic between the insulation layers, so it would not get punctured.

Then rebar and heating: There is 2 layers of rebar net. More where it overlaps. There is metal distance keepers between the layers of net and plastic struts under the lower layer. Where the nets were overlapping the most there was no need for distance keepers so they were removed. Notice the thicker concrete along the perimeter and along the dividing wall will go.

 

[Nighttrain]

I guess my flat yard and only needing about five truck loads of fill is not all that bad after all. Your really doing a nice job. Keep the photos coming.

 

[JackB]

Thank you
Regarding the concrete volume I belive it was about 68 cubic yards or 52 cubic meters.
I was with steel fibers too, in addition to the rebar net. Like the ones in the picture below.
I was worried about cracking...

 

[Motown 454]

Nice project. Thats a great idea putting the poly between the layers of insulation.

 

[Showboy]

Ummm ... IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII'm always a little late.

Beautiful countryside!

Nice plan.

Subscribed.

 

[JackB]

Next was the pouring of the slab. About the only thing I didn't do myself. They also put in rebar pieces for anchoring the rear wall. I was at work when they poured it so no pictures of that. They put plastic on the concret it so it would cure properly, and as you can see the plastic was not removed until it absolutely had to. The longer the concrete gets to stay wet the less chances of cracking and the harder the concrete will get. On the next two pictures I have put up about half of the back support wall. Is is made of concrete blocks with holes in them that gets filled with rebar and concrete on-site. I used 3 vertical bars in each hole and two horizontal in each row of blocks. Rebar size was 5/8" or 16mm.
One thing I regret about the formwork for the slab was putting the insulation on the inside of the form. I was hoping it would stick to the concrete, but that only worked about 25% of the time so it was just a lot of hassle. Probably why it is never done elsewhere...

Here the concrete wall is almost complete, only missing a couple of blocks on the middle support. The compressor has also arrived (brown box).

Here we are cutting down some more trees that could possibly fall onto the garage.
Roof trusses has also arrived.

 

[JackB]

A little later... or actually at least a month or two later: The framing starts going up. The snow didn't exactly make it easy.

The roof trusses has been moved "inside" to make them somwhat easier to get to. They are not directly on the concrete as I noticed the ice starting to build up. I actually had to put another 2x4 unerneath them so the ice would not catch up and freeze them in place. The reason the ice was building up was that the slab was still above freezing, but not enough to melt all the snow that was coming down. There was quite an icelayer after a while, as will be seen later.

The trusses are going up, with the help of the new tractor (next picture):

More snow:

 

[JackB]

First visitor:

All the roof trusses are up:

In this picture it's easy to see all the ice forming on the slab, and that it's not dry like all the snow around the slab:

I moved the compressor inside the house to get easy access to power and to keep it dry. It's a 7,5hp unit. From this point on it's used for the nail-gun and misc other air tools:

 

[94ONLYSS]

Hmmm pictures are looking like you are somewhere in Scandinavia...Sweden maybe??

 

[JackB]

The side-part of the roof is completed too:

Here the pipes for the heating system can be seen:

 

[JackB]

Roof is weather proof. Not finished ,but it will last for at least a couple of years like this:

 

[JackB]

Wind protection almost complete:

Started insulating the walls. The heat pump have arrived too:

 

[JackB]

First layer for the air gap between the wood and the windproofing:

More insulation:

These roof beams need to be cut to size.

 

[JackB]

The hole behind the garage will take some loads to fill.

Finally dry and ice-free inside. Getting comfortable.

 

[GirlnAgarage]

Nice building for sure. Though I couldn't do the cold.

The hole behind the garage will take some loads to fill.

Just a question as I don't know either way. Will filling the dirt back in (against the building?) create any kind of moisture issue for the interior brick?

 

[chopt49]

Great build - and damn that is some tuff work in all that snow, makes the dusting I get not so bad.

 

[JackB]

Nice building for sure. Though I couldn't do the cold.
Just a question as I don't know either way. Will filling the dirt back in (against the building?) create any kind of moisture issue for the interior brick?

Thank you!
As will be seen later I will fill in with crushed rock, the same kind as under the floor, so the water will drain easily into the drainage pipes.
There will also be a thick plastic plate on the outside of the concrete block which will keep all the moisture on the outside.

Great build - and damn that is some tuff work in all that snow, makes the dusting I get not so bad.

Thank you!
The snow makes it a little harder but it's not that bad really

 

[JackB]

Misc wood for inside and out + more insulating work. The insulation in the walls are 6" + 2" (148mm + 48mm). If I forgot to mention the polystyrene insulation under the floor is 2 x 3.15".

Wiring, which as can be seen here will be hidden. Apart from to the light fixtures are those will be so close together.

Wall insulation almost done in this part. Looking into what will be the room for heating and air etc.

The cardboard up there creates an air gap so that there will not be issues with melting snow in the middle of the winter.

Door has arrived. Spent more than I wanted on it but good doors are not cheap.

More wiring. As can be seen on the back wall the outside plastic is not mounted on the concrete blocks yet so the wall leaks. Doesn't matter at this stage.

 

[nathank]

Looking good!

 

[slimpickins]

Hmmm pictures are looking like you are somewhere in Scandinavia...Sweden maybe??

Must be a secret! Could be northern Canada (Alberta or BC) but the construction is a little different.

 

[ambenz]

Nice build...you sure found a great forum to show how it's done!!!
I subscribed!

 

[JackB]

Must be a secret! Could be northern Canada (Alberta or BC) but the construction is a little different.

It is north of Albert Lea. That's as close as I want to describe the location

The roof steel has arrived (yellow), as has the plaster boards for the ceiling.

Wall insulation getting close to completion. Also started on the ceiling. Just a tip here: If you install the plastic while it is hot in the air it will shrink and tighten up wonderfully until next morning.

At this point the dust was getting a bit annoying, a combination of concrete dust and insulation.

 

[JackB]

Second visitor to the garage. He was very unafraid and just sat on the wood trying to get warm.

Closeup:

Ceiling is soon done:

Particle board on the walls being installed so it is possible to fasten things to the walls. I kind of regret not using plasterboard and relying on the wood behind for fastening items. I would say it's close to impossible to get a good finish on the particle board because of expansion and contraction.

Insulation and wiring complete on this wall

 

[JackB]

At this point the inside insulation is complete on all the walls:

Moving on with the walls and the ceiling:

I am almost impressed with myself how tidy I manage to keep it

Finally the garage door is in. One of 3 things I didn't do myself. Because installation is included in the price. Took 1 year before it was done to my satisfaction though.

Outside wall insulation:

The waterproof plastic is going on the outside of the insulation

 

[nathank]

Looking good. Looks like a lot of hard work.

 

[slimpickins]

It is north of Albert Lea. That's as close as I want to describe the location

I understand! Anonimity is like a warm blanket ... and one of the best forms of security!

Great build btw! That's some fast progress!

 

[rburke65]

Ya, like this tells me alot. I have NO idea where this is....It is north of Albert Lea...but that's OK. Nice build, and welcome to GJ. Hell, I'm lucky to know where Ohio is located.

 

[JackB]

I understand! Anonimity is like a warm blanket ... and one of the best forms of security!
Great build btw! That's some fast progress!

Thanks! And you're spot on.

The progress is not quite as fast as the postings on here sadly
I started digging in the middle of April 2007. The pictures in the last post are from June of 2008, so at this point we're about 14 months into the build. Lots of pictures and time still to go