Above 1200 Sq/FT The Blizzard Build 40x60

[TurnipTruck]

Back in 2018, I took the summer off from a multi-year reconstruction of a severely neglected* fifty-year-old lake house in Alaska and, in a flurry of activity, built a shop.

This is the story of how close to death an old man can work himself.


Here we are orienting the building to the driveway within the property constraints.
In order to get to this milestone, however, we had to scrape a copse of trees and haul in four feet of gravel.
Then we got to pay again to have all that gravel dug out by a different guy and actually compacted.



*Severely neglected: front and rear decks dangerously rotten, hall carpeting worn through to subfloor, “turdcicle” in attic during winter above sewer vent that never made it outside, structural rot caused by “turdcicle” melting, amateur wiring, contractor added another roof atop an underbuilt collapsed roof, drop ceiling would flutter in heavy winds, ad nauseum.

 

[TurnipTruck]

Then we dug out some of that freshly-compacted gravel and buried a cross-slab drain pipe to an eventual dry well.

 

[TurnipTruck]

Multiple conduits and drains had to be buried and recompacted and the trench drain and hoist got additional excavation. The slab is 5.5” thick, the trench drain at least 12”, and the hoist pads are 8.”This is early in the rebar-tying, and shows how the trench was formed.
So far I have to pump the snowmelt out of the trench only twice a winter.

 

[TurnipTruck]

The slab was sawcut the day after pouring, with special consideration to avoid the hoist area.

 

[TurnipTruck]

After a suitable cure time **eighteen months!**, I used a back blade on the tractor to expose the edges to bury frost protection foam.

 

[velillen01]

looks like a great start!

 

[Maxcustody]

Great start! Looking forward to this............................I am getting a 40 x 60 shop built as well. Excavation has been completed clearing the land and building up grade and the pad is in the process.

 

[MacTexas]

Looks like you are off to a great start.

 

[TurnipTruck]

After burying the foam, the fun part began: Framing! Here you can see 10’ 2x6 studs, fire blocking, and beam pockets. I let in some 1x4 diagonals to keep the back wall square and raised it with the tractor. The two inner walls were then slid over and redheaded down to keep everything square.

 

[TurnipTruck]

Erecting a pair of 16’-long walls completed the little end of the shop. The tall part was next. My favorite wife found some used triple pane windows that matched the house and brought them home. My last shop had no windows and I hated it.
Dog approves the framing.

 

[TurnipTruck]

I had been able to raise most of the other walls by myself, but the door wall kept snagging on the side walls, so my favorite wife invited her coworkers over for lunch and a wall raising.
Then I pulled everything square and slapped up two pallets of T1-11 sheathing.
That rusty thing on the trailer is an old pressure vessel my wife’s boss donated to use as the drywell.

 

[TurnipTruck]

The side door needed a significant header to handle the 70psf snow load.The day before Truss Day.

 

[TurnipTruck]

Truss Day before the pandemonium.Truss day after.

 

[TurnipTruck]

After several days of blocking/spacing/stiffening, the rest of the sheathing went up. Two thirds of the way back you may be able to see the four foot gap between the two kinds of trusses.That rusty vessel (and a bunch of rip rap and washout as a drain field) had to be buried so the next part of the building could progress.

 

[TurnipTruck]

These sono tubes and Bigfeet had to be buried…
…every twelve feet. All six then got rebar and threaded rod and home-mixed concrete.

 

[TurnipTruck]

While that cured, I built three of these bents and stood them up and braced to the building, then connected the three with more header and slapped 33 joists on top.And suddenly we had 60’ of lean-to.

 

[TurnipTruck]

I and the kids (and later some friends) jumped on the roof and started sheathing that while my wife spent two days spraying 45 gallons of primer and paint on the exterior.In the same Moss Green to match the house.

 

[TurnipTruck]

Sheathed. Some of the people who kept this old man from dying of exhaustion. I think this was the 28th day in a row of construction.

 

[TurnipTruck]

I recruited more friends and family to help me sheet the roof. I had this giant crate I wanted to lift the metal to the roof, but my tractor couldn’t lift the crate and roofing, so yet another friend volunteered his Bobcat.Waterproof and wind proof and almost ready for Winter. While waiting for the Bobcat, we ran a drone up to get a 1000 foot view of the property. Man, did I have a lot of junk then.

 

[TurnipTruck]

While that may look like a window, it is actually a six foot triple pane sliding door twelve feet in the air. At the other end of the shop, we had to wire and insulate the door wall and put up the shear panels before the doors could go up.
The doors are R18 Clopays and are 18x11, 12x12, and 9x8.

 

[TurnipTruck]

I was experimenting with some Chinese LEDs to empirically determine spacing, but was never satisfied. I did end up using these cheap lights on a lower ceiling.This is the back subpanel (1 of 3). The conduit will connect to pipe buried before the slab was poured and end up in the center of each workshop floor. Then later the cabinet saw on one side and the under-table welder on the other side can have their wires hidden.That 1” galvanized pipe resting on the truss bottom chord runs from the front of the building where the compressor will be to several drops in each shop and out to the hoist post. I also dropped an airline down in the wall to the future workbench site. The first half of the air header got pressure tested for eight days. I will have to put a blowdown in this branch as the cold wall will condense any water in this low point.

 

[TurnipTruck]

It is deep winter now, and I can only work a few hours each weekend day without shivering.
So with a foot of snow on the new roof, it is way past time to put up the I-beams my truss designer required at the attic truss nodes.
This is the weld side, so I will hang a trolley from this beam, and the cantilever will get extended in the future.
I had these two I-beams already but they calculated out as just barely sufficient, so I trussed the attic walls above with plywood for extra overkill. This is the wood shop side. Same thing except no cantilever.
I hadn’t yet learned the trick of flipping the forks over, so I had to stack a pile of pallets to lift each beam. The gray vertical pipe has a floor jack at its bottom so I could level the beam.

 

[TurnipTruck]

I stapled up this vapor barrier single-handed, as in my non-dominant shoulder was locked up and inflamed from overuse on this project.
This is the four foot gap between each kind of truss to allow inside access upstairs. To reach this blocking, I was on three stages of scaffold and a 6’ stepladder.

 

[TurnipTruck]

We spent all winter getting ready for drywall. The shop is ready, my body is not. We hired a crew.Three units of sheet rock on my poor trailer. Its not rated to handle the weight of the fourth unit of rock this barn needed.

 

[TurnipTruck]

Three burly drywall guys spent all day on just the lid. It would have taken two months and extensive chiropractic care if I had done it.Instead, I was outside trenching eight feet down for gas, water and power.The trench is approximately one and a half daughters deep.
That mangled galvy pipe behind her was a fifty year old water line to the old dairy barn that could not be isolated or flushed, and was a constant source of rust until we were able to totally bypass the entire old water system.

 

[TurnipTruck]

We buried a gasline for the shop, a smaller gasline for a standby generator, two conduits for the generator, some direct-bury for the shop, and some cheap pex for some blow-in fiber. The water line is already buried and insulated four feet lower in the trench.
Due to Alaskan requirements for frost heave, we have to have eighteen inches of flex. Hopefully some paint will make this manifold less obvious.
We had to relocate the gas meter when we removed a wart from the house and had to upsize (because of the generator) from a 180mscf to a 450? Then the utility wouldn’t reinstall the meter due to old leaks so I got to track down and repair thirty-year-old gas leaks before I could shower that night.
Most of the leaks were poorly cut or missing pipe threads, but one was a cracked valve. The previous owner had mentioned an infrequent gas smell. I punched through the side of the can so the conduit would align with the top 125a breaker.
All of my 240v loads are powered before the transfer switch so the standby generator wouldn’t have to be oversized for the 50a range and the 30a hot tub (the bottom two breakers).
This is the first subpanel in the shop. I was given this 12-slot panel, but I should have bought a 20-slot to avoid having to use tandem breakers.

 

[TurnipTruck]

After six weeks and a lot of weed, the sheet rockers were done. My wife insisted on masking paper for the entire floor after past experiences, and we left the paper down when we sprayed two coats of pva primer and two coats of paint.We painted the Evil Genius Lair upstairs while we were at it.Just the masking paper made a dump load.

 

[TurnipTruck]

One of the first things installed was a Forward 10K.
I didn’t want to risk scratching or dropping with the tractor, so I winched up the posts using scaffold as a skyhook, then walking them into final position.
I drilled through the slab and used 3/4x10” Hilti anchors torqued to 110 ft-lbs.

 

[TurnipTruck]

The very first thing lifted after wiring the hoist was a thousand pound weld table. We plucked it right off the trailer and set it down on some skates.The table then got wheeled into the weld shop and centered on the floor conduit. It later got wheeled back to the hoist and lifted off the floor to cut 6” off each leg. 44” was just too tall. Most of the tables and table saw are 37” here.

 

[TurnipTruck]

It is now Fall, and darkness and cold are coming, so we must get all the wiring/air piping/ducting/gas piping/junction boxes/heaters installed and tested so we can blow in a foot or two of insulation. This is the first test of a dozen of the $100/ea Home Depot 24” LED panels. Looks like they should have been a couple feet closer to each other, and that another row will be needed in the back.
First test of the Chinese LEDs on the wood shop ceiling. I wired up the remotely switched air cleaner receptacle right before blowing the insulation in.We also tested all the outside lighting before covering everything in the attics with insulation.

 

[TurnipTruck]

I had to special order a separated combustion air 80k Hot Dawg, primarily to control infiltration air, but flammable atmosphere is a minor consideration, too.Eighty bales gave us somewhere between R60 and R80.Some of the many things in this attic about to be covered with a couple feet of insulation: the insulated duct is a 6” fume fan exhaust; the black pipe is 1-1/4” gas line; the silver line is a 1” galvy air header; the uninsulated duct is for outside combustion air to the furnace; the flat 2x6 will be a buried walkway.

 

[TurnipTruck]

I found an 80kbtu 95% furnace for cheap (installed/never used) and installed it and some custom ducting in the toolroom. I didn’t want another small/inefficient heater up in the Lair, and I was worried the workshops would be too cold with the Hot Dawg blowing away from them, so when this heater popped up on Craigslist, we headed to town despite a “travel-not-recommended” blizzard.
The two small round ducts go upstairs to a pair of floor registers.
The left and right rectangular ducts blow through the walls to circulate into each shop.
I haven’t turned on the expensive 80% Hot Dawg in a year.
I ducted a return plenum from above to immediately downstream of the filter to get the pressures where they needed to be.
Both furnaces are on cords so they can be run from a generator during an outage. The auto transfer was not large enough for both buildings.

 

[TurnipTruck]

In an effort to start getting all my **** off the floor and readily accessible, I took this stainless steel garage sale bench top and welded rear brackets and bolted-down front legs to it. A mis-matched pair of Home Depot Husky cabinets got their wheels and wood tops pulled off and placed on custom scribe fit steel brackets. Nothing is welded or bolted to the boxes. If I need to access the conduits or drain behind the left box, I just palletjack it up, pull out the brackets, and pull out at an angle.The creepers fit underneath as if they were designed.
There is a central drain in the bench, but I doubt it will ever need a water spigot. I did plumb air back there with an auto blowdown, so regulated and unregulated air connects may appear, even if it’s only to fill the holes drilled in the top.

 

[TurnipTruck]

Now is finally the time to see if my evil Plan will actually allow access to the Evil Genius Lair.
First: stretch the cantilever with the other beam’s offcut and see if I remember how to weld. Add a spacer to the top. Wedge a chunk of pipe in the spacer to get enough height for a winch. Second: I found this pipe spool in the dumpster years ago and brought it home. I was originally going to weld another flange to the top and bolt the spool top and bottom, but later realized I wouldn’t have the headroom, so I stuck on some more 4” O-beam as a walk-through.
Third: get the flag upright without getting it down right on my head.
Fourth: chain and strap the unbalanced flag to a ladder and walk the whole thing a couple yards into position and redhead it down. Weld a standoff at the top.

 

[TurnipTruck]

Fifth: chop up a bunch of grating remnants. I got to buy a Milwaukee metal saw for this project.
Twelve oughta do. Weld some 1x1/4 flat bar around their perimeters with an under hood respirator and the fume fan going cuz galvanizing.
Sixth: measure, estimate, and guess. Weld the steps on.

 

[loganb]

Super cool build!

 

[TurnipTruck]

Sixth again: Realize I didn’t account for the walkway that is going to hit me in the face. Cut off all of the steps and clean up the axle.Still Sixth: weld more steps on at a greater rise. I would have preferred twelve steps but then one step would completely occlude the pass-through hole to the future chopsaw.
Seventh (finally): stick on a bunch of lethal-looking balusters while I figure out how to roll a bannister.
Notice step 4 has a shortened baluster in front of the pass-through hole. It will get a tension brace from above and step 3 will get braced to the floor.

 

[TurnipTruck]

Eighth: hoist another I-beam high enough to get the pile-o-pallets underneath.
Setting the beam on top of the cantilever spacer on the left and fine tuning level on the right.
Setting more salvaged grating and finally walking into the Lair for the first time ever without having to climb a ladder.

 

[TurnipTruck]

While waiting for bannister divine inspiration, I dug out some salvaged jamb-less French doors and made some jamb.
Now what? The Sheetrock lift doesn’t go high enough!
Now that the doors are in, I can put the threshold in and continue murdering my back installing leftover vinyl plank.I trimmed out the Lair in the same style as the house. We were given a nice leather couch and a massage chair that we flew up before the deck was built.
The back door from the Lair will eventually step out to another cantilevered grating deck looking out on one of the lakes.

 

[TurnipTruck]

What would happen if you had a whole stick of inch pipe rolled to the distance between opposing balusters?And then what would happen if you stretched it out, eventually paying attention to the direction of spiral?I created some hard spots stretching one way then back the other direction, but with enough winching/banging/hickeys/welding, that dang baluster conformed to my vision.