Above 1200 Sq/FT The Shiloh Shop Project.......................

[bimmer1980]

Greetings....

I've been following along on GarageJournal as I have designed and built my garage. I've debated about doing a Gallery Build thread.... Of course, the design definitely increased and changed with perusal of the various garages posted on here....

Here are a few shots of the nearly completed garage before the driveway was paved.





Summer of 2017.

I will probably jump around a bit on the build. I have plenty of pictures, but it would take more time than I can allocate to put in every build step. I'll post some of unique build methods that I enjoyed or that I feel may be helpful to others.

This project took over 9 years to get to where it is at today. It still is not completely finished and probably never will be.....

There were highs and lows to the journey, but overall, I'm happy with where it ended up...

Follow along at your own risk!!

 

[bimmer1980]

I spent some time in ProEngineer Wildfire designing the garage so I could work out some of the details.

I had to go thru a variance with the township to get the height that I wanted. It involved proving a "Hardship" as the PennDOT had taken some of our land for a road project. This allowed me to exceed the max height of an accessory building to go from 15' to 20'.

Once the permit was received, I could proceed with digging.

I knew I would need a skid steer, so I went down a rabbit hole of looking for equipment. (this was happening concurrent with the design process...)

After much looking, I ended up buying a used Bobcat 642 on craigslist....










Before I bought the Bobcat, I ended up buying a trenching bucket at one of the equipment auctions.... I did not have my little trailer along, but I was able to squeeze it into the rear of the BMW...

 

[bimmer1980]

In July of 2009, I was finally able to get started with the digging. I had not run an excavator before, but I charged ahead with renting one for a weekend and going for it....

I should have been a bit more careful about dirt placement and the bottom of the trenches....

Of course, after the digging was done, we received some torrential rain showers that proceeded to wash dirt back into the trenches and make a regular muddy mess..... ug....

I should have rented the excavator for another weekend and dug it back out, but I was a glutton for punishment and dug it out by hand... That majorly sucked!

 

[bimmer1980]

Of course, the next thing to do was to get the water out....

I used a sump pump, hose and conduit to get the water away from the hole....

 

[bimmer1980]

It was shear drudgery to scoop the mud out by hand.... It also involved a ramp, a chain hooked from the skid steer to a wheel and the wife in the skid steer to pull me out with a load of muck in the wheel barrow...... city girl in a skid steer with minimal training was interesting! She wasn't thrilled, but did a great job!

Once the muck was off the bottom and it was good virgin soil, I placed and compacted rock into to make an even base for the footing.

 

[bimmer1980]

Moving along.... Mid September of 2009...

Mud is out.... Stone is in... Plate packing with each layer.....

Notice the ramps to cross the trench..... I did a few calcs before I made the ramps.... Due to the constraints of the site, I needed to get to the inside of the trench...

 

[bimmer1980]

A little car will pull a trailer with a load of wood.....

I then proceeded with making my forms and placing rebar....

There is more than one way to bend rebar.....













I was finally getting smarter about rain, dirt piles and mud..... notice the tarps over the dirt piles.

 

[BMWBOB]

Cool!

 

[bimmer1980]

As the previous pictures show the use of rebar, I had some rebar delivered prior to that.....

Getting the bundle or rebar off the truck was fairly straightforward....













I put a skid steer on each end to help keep the rebar from digging into the ground.....

 

[bimmer1980]

The next step was pouring the footing... it was a little interesting getting all the concrete place. My brother-in-Law and my Father-in-law were kind enough to give me a hand.

I was very stingy with adding water to mix to control the stength.. Of course, that made it a lot harder to flow into the forms....

It did turn out to be a good pour--plenty of concrete in the forms.

 

[bimmer1980]

I did debate with myself about hiring someone to do the block work.... I probably should have after finding out how long it took me to do it.... But, I did rather enjoy the process. The walls use 12" block below grade. heavy little buggers....

I had the concrete blocks delivered and placed in locations that would hopefully minimize lugging them around...

I also had a load of sand delivered.

Yikes!! What did I sign up for???

 

[bimmer1980]

Next up was to actually start laying some block. What an adventure that was!!

I bought a small concrete/plaster mixer to help. It did an ok job with mixing mortar, but it does a better job with concrete.... (Note...I ended up buying a mortar mixer for the brick work....)

I would never make any money being a mason... I just take too long....

I laid out the blocks. Then I started building my corners. I had string lines to aim for the correct height.

 

[bimmer1980]

Then it was a matter of mix, place and repeat...... Slowly of course!!







Notice the missing block.... Stay tuned for why that is.... Hint...electrical

 

[bimmer1980]

Due to the design of the garage, I had a couple of offset walls and some brace walls.... That made for some interesting block joints...

 

[bimmer1980]

I had a few late nights working....

Of course, there had to be rain rolling in, so I got everything covered.....

 

[billspit]

You definitely should have hired out a block mason. They would have done that is 1-2 days.

Oh, and awesome build BTW.

 

[bimmer1980]

As luck and planning would have it, not all the blocks were in the closest places to where I needed them....

Once in awhile I try to work smarter rather than harder....









But I continued to make some progress......

 

[LXCam]

That was a heck of a lot of work to do all by yourself. Nice job bimmer.

 

[bimmer1980]

Sometimes you have to make do to be able to make progress.....

Here is my version of a tent....









It was also getting towards the end of the decent weather season. It was now the beginning of November of 2009.







I finally decided that I should strip the footing forms off....

 

[bimmer1980]

You definitely should have hired out a block mason. They would have done that is 1-2 days.

Oh, and awesome build BTW.

Yup..... Shoulda.....

However, then I would not have learned anything.... It was rather therapeutic to do block work after sitting in the office all day....

 

[bimmer1980]

Moving along.... it was time to get some of the electrical conduits and plumbing pipe in before continuing with the block work.....

I rented the excavator again... Of course it had to rain the night before I was to start digging... The excavator was already onsite at that point....

Electrical was to be on the west side of the house and the plumbing on the east side.... This was due to the layout inside the house.... Therefore two trenches... lots of digging...

Due to space constraints, I had to move the dirt away from the backside of the trench.... What a muddy mess......

 

[bimmer1980]

Doing the second trench for the electrical work was a bit less muddy... Had to pull the dirt away from the trench....

I also opted to put in the conduit under the section of driveway without cutting the asphalt..... Yeah... fun project.... A directional line borer would have helped.....

I suppose I could have just cut the asphalt, but knowing how things would go, I wanted to preserve the asphalt as long as possible.

I was able to get the conduit it, but it was challenging....

 

[bimmer1980]

Next it was time to finish the conduit and get ready for some wire.......

I put in two 2" conduits and one 1" conduit. One of the 2" conduits would be used for the #2 copper. The other is a spare and the 1" is for communications if I decide to pull in Cat5 or fiber....

 

[bimmer1980]

Concurrent with the electrical work, I also hired a plumber to help me with the actual plumbing, testing, permitting... That is required in our township.

 

[bimmer1980]

As a side note.... Of course the tires on the skid steer were quite bald.... also ended up popping one off the bead in the muckity mess.... So I sucked it up and got a couple of new tires....

 

[bimmer1980]

In the early planning stages of the garage, I had picked up a spool of #2 copper to use for the electrical feed from the house. To get all the conductors lined up how I needed them, I had to unspool the cable reel and re-wind it.....









I used a vacuum cleaner to **** a plastic bag with the pull string into the conduit. Then I pulled in a pull rope and used that to pull the wire into the conduit. After the wire was into the conduit, I glued on the 90 to go into the house.

 

[bimmer1980]

Of course, Winter happened...... This is December of 2009 and January 2010...

 

[bimmer1980]

The next joyful task was some perimeter drainage pipes and back filling....

Not going into a lot of detail here.. Suffice it to say that I needed to dig out the spoil dirt that had washed into the trenches, place some stone, place the pipe, connect it all up.....

 

[bimmer1980]

After the dust had settled a bit, I decided I wanted to add a course of blocks to the plan. With the back filling, I thought the garage was going to sit lower than would be wise. So I proceeded to get a couple of loads of block on my little trailer and add the course....

 

[bimmer1980]

Then I wanted a good solid bond beam, so I cut the cores and knocked them out. I also focused on the electrical work and my plan....

I did not want endless streams of Romex hither and yon in my garage... hence, the underground conduits to each wall of the garage. This also required some selective cutting and notching of the blocks to fit is all in....

 

[bimmer1980]

It's now Mid April of 2010....

I added a course of 6" blocks and left gaps for doors, etc. This leaves a brick ledge for the future.....

 

[bimmer1980]

Next step was to start insulating the inside of the walls and to get the electrical conduit from the main panel area over to the walls....

 

[bimmer1980]

I continued to back fill with stone and compact. I think I went thru about six truck loads of stone.... each about 22 to 23 tons....

 

[bimmer1980]

Next up was a layer of stone dust, wet and them compacted....

 

[jeffcoll]

Wow! A lot of work! You really put a lot of thought into that electrical!

 

[cesarbee440]

Wow is right!
I would be afraid to try and handle all that work especially running into trouble with bad weather, equipment etc!....and with not much help!

 

[bimmer1980]

Thanks for the comments! It was a lot of work and planning... stay tuned for later in the build on how the underground conduit is used....

 

[bimmer1980]

I proceeded with laying down a vapor barrier and then a layer of 3.5" polyiso foam. There are other foams that may be more appropriate, but this is what I had available and what I used for my project.....

I did a layout of the Pex heating tube. Then I worked to get the tubing laid out on the foam. My preference for heat tubing is to have it in the concrete, not at the very bottom. I used some plastic snap channels to hold the tubing into position. Then I placed a grid of 1/2" rebar on 1' centers. I then wire tied the rebar together and then lifted the grid onto rebar chairs. Then the pex tubing was tied to the bottom side of the rebar. It was very labor consuming. Especially since most of this work was done in late June and early July of 2010.

I opted to pour the 16' x 28' section of concrete as a first step. I would prep and pour the 28 x 44' section later.....

I opted to hire a couple of guys to help with placing the concrete. Then my b-in-L and I did the finishing work.....















Yeah, I know... Croc's aren't the best footware for this, but after slogging around in rubber boots for the morning, it felt pretty good.....

I then covered the concrete for a 28 day wet cure....

 

[bimmer1980]

Here was a little side project that I did before the concrete pour... I bought a used power trowel. Of course, it had a little problem... The clutch was locked up on it. I separated the motor from the gear box and got to the clutch. The tabs on the clutch weights had broken off. I proceeded to weld them back on with my Century Flux core welder. Then I went to Advance auto Parts and picked up a spring kit for a set of auto drum brakes. I was able to select two springs that were close. I then bent the end of the springs to work in the clutch and put it back together. Surprisingly enough, it worked well. That old beast of a power trowel worked well. I sold it a few years later for double what I bought it for.....











I figured out that a good way to test the power trowel is to wet the asphalt down and give it a whirl.... I didn't run it long that way, but sufficient to have the confidence to use on my project....

 

[bimmer1980]

Next up was a bunch of work to prep the 28' x 44' area for concrete.

--Drain system
--Pex
--Foam
--Rebar and tying....









Before I let the new concrete cure for too long, I marked and cut some relief cuts...