Building a new house and shop

[65swb45]

Aerial photography and tax assessors reminds me of a story my friend Carne told me about growing up in rural San Luis Obispo.

His family put a travel trailer on the property. Eventually the tax assessor ‘saw’ it from the air and they got a tax bill. They fought with the assessor, made them come out and see it wasn’t a ‘permanent‘ structure. Got the assessment back down. Let a few years go by, then sold the trailer and built their new building on the shadow footprint of where the trailer was.

 

[65swb45]

BTW, your rooftop looks to be blending in nicely, just the way you planned.

 

[Dunbar]

Das 1911 Bunker

 

[1911]

Das 1911 Bunker

The window openings may have been designed to fit a Flak 88 ... allegedly.

 

[PIP]

The window openings may have been designed to fit a Flak 88 ... allegedly.

One for every window should lay down a fair cover eh?

 

[waiting for time]

Close to where I live we have these bunkers that are disguised as houses or other basic buildings. You can see some of the openings painted on and others have thick massive steel hatches.

 

[1911]

Close to where I live we have these bunkers that are disguised as houses or other basic buildings. You can see some of the openings painted on and others have thick massive steel hatches.

It may not qualify as a massive steel hatch, but our front door and the frame for it are 14-gauge steel. It took three men to load and unload it. The frame is set into the concrete with multiple large lag bolts, and the dead bolt will go through the steel frame into the concrete - there won't be anybody kicking in that door ever. The glass panels in it are tempered glass also.

 

[1911]

Finished foaming all around the windows and door; still have some caulking to do and to trim some of the excess foam before adding some exterior trim around the windows.

Now that (most) of the house is air tight, I needed to put screens over all the vent stacks up on top. They're too tall for rodents to get in, but i want to exclude all the damned dirt daubers and other wasps and flying insects. Attached some aluminum screening with duct clamps:

 

[PIP]

It may not qualify as a massive steel hatch, but our front door and the frame for it are 14-gauge steel. It took three men to load and unload it. The frame is set into the concrete with multiple large lag bolts, and the dead bolt will go through the steel frame into the concrete - there won't be anybody kicking in that door ever. The glass panels in it are tempered glass also.

Sounds reasonable to me.

When I built my shop I knew I wanted a 20' wide door so I could drive 20' material through on forklift forks. I priced out a 14' tall 20' wide insulated roll up door and just about fell over at 2016 prices. I went a bit overkill, but ended up with 2 rolling doors 14' tall and 10' wide that weigh about 2500 lbs a piece. I salvaged some 6' tall rolled steel casement windows with intact 3/8" thick patterned glass out of a 1910 factory building. The lower 8' is solid 3/16" plate. The frame is 3" x 8" x 1/4" steel tubing and it rolls on 20" tall WWII D2 Caterpillar track nose wheels in a 5" steel channel track and floor drain system set in 30" thick reinforced concrete. I've got about $5k into it, but it's still bare steel. This summer I'm going to have the doors blasted and bring them to the biggest galvanizer in the West to hot dip both doors.

I figured if I'm gonna spend $10k on a door I want some guy 500 years from now to wonder who the hell built it.

 

[PAToyota]

It may not qualify as a massive steel hatch, but our front door and the frame for it are 14-gauge steel. It took three men to load and unload it. The frame is set into the concrete with multiple large lag bolts, and the dead bolt will go through the steel frame into the concrete - there won't be anybody kicking in that door ever. The glass panels in it are tempered glass also.

You need something like this!

Sounds reasonable to me.

When I built my shop I knew I wanted a 20' wide door so I could drive 20' material through on forklift forks. I priced out a 14' tall 20' wide insulated roll up door and just about fell over at 2016 prices. I went a bit overkill, but ended up with 2 rolling doors 14' tall and 10' wide that weigh about 2500 lbs a piece. I salvaged some 6' tall rolled steel casement windows with intact 3/8" thick patterned glass out of a 1910 factory building. The lower 8' is solid 3/16" plate. The frame is 3" x 8" x 1/4" steel tubing and it rolls on 20" tall WWII D2 Caterpillar track nose wheels in a 5" steel channel track and floor drain system set in 30" thick reinforced concrete. I've got about $5k into it, but it's still bare steel. This summer I'm going to have the doors blasted and bring them to the biggest galvanizer in the West to hot dip both doors.

I figured if I'm gonna spend $10k on a door I want some guy 500 years from now to wonder who the hell built it.

Ok, we're going to need pictures of that!

And I fully agree with your "500 years from now" stance on things!

 

[1911]

So, I've been busy working on the house (when I'm not doing work that I can bill for money) but there's not a lot to show for it - unglamorous stuff like caulking around all the windows, screwing 2x6's into the concrete inside the garage openings so that the garage door rails can be mounted to them, and installing the front door hardware. Accurately measuring, cutting, and assembling the 2x6's has been a learning curve for me - my interests have always run to mechanical things rather than carpentry, even though I did take wood shop in junior high. My dad was an excellent carpenter and craftsman; he built several houses, churches, and a lot of fine furniture. Now that he's gone, I wish I had learned more from him about carpentry. But, I bought a miter saw and have been learning to use it. I'm happy enough so far, but glad that I'm not under a time deadline so that I can take my time and go as slow as I want.

A few photos to document the process (sorry about the low light at the end of the day):

2x6 facings inside the garage openings. Here is the 16' door; I also have two other 8' doors.

They go on with TapCon screws; another skill to learn and another tool to buy, a rotary hammer to easily drill holes in concrete.

The front door with its hardware (latch set and deadbolt lock) installed. This was something of an adventure.

The latch and lock set cost half again as much as the door (Mrs. 1911 picked it out and wanted it), but nonetheless was missing one crucial part and needed a fair amount of work to get everything to work as it should. When I called customer service about the missing part, they sent me a whole 'nother set/kit all over again - took two weeks to get here, and the second one was missing the exact same part. So I ended up making it myself. It's the backing plate that holds the deadbolt cylinder in the door; two long machine screws go through it and thread into the deadbolt cylinder.

Made it out of 3/16" aluminum flat stock. It has to go over the inside opening but still fit under the interior hardware cover plate.

 

[1911]

The garage doors and openers have been ordered. Simple conservative ones, foam insulated. Of course, there is a 2-3 month wait time, like the windows (different company though).

The electric co-op has been paid to come install another meter for the house, so it will be set and ready. The first interior wall I will build will the one in the mechanical room that will house the circuit breaker panel, transfer switch, media panel, and etc. I am digging a narrow trench by hand, trying to locate the buried water and electric lines that go out to the chicken coop, because we'll have to cross them with the underground from the transformer to the meter, but I haven't found them yet. The electric co-op says they will bury the power line 4' deep, which I'm fairly certain is deeper than the lines to the coop.

After that, I will be cutting, priming, and screwing on 2x4 wood trim around all the windows, and grinding the form seams on the interior concrete to get it ready for plaster.

 

[65swb45]

Hadn’t crossed my mind until you mentioned the wall for the service panel Lee. All the conduit exposed, or are you going to have some sort of drop ceiling?

 

[bkfj40]

When you bury lines in the future, put down locating tape over the top of them. No more guessing where that water line is in the future.

Sounds like you have been learning lots and you get to work with your hands. A two for one special!

 

[1911]

Hadn’t crossed my mind until you mentioned the wall for the service panel Lee. All the conduit exposed, or are you going to have some sort of drop ceiling?

Mark, about 80% of the conduit, outlets, switch boxes and etc. were cast into the concrete walls and (dome) ceilings, and wire was pulled to most of these before the floors were poured. The remaining ~ 20% of wiring will be through the interior walls to be built, and again wire was pulled through "smurf tube" plastic conduit in/under the floors to those floor and concrete wall locations where the wire can enter the interior framed walls. There is a big bundle of conduit and wires emerging from the floor underneath where the service panel wall will be built.

The only real disadvantage to this is that you have to decide where all of your outlets and switches are going to be before construction starts, there's no changing them later except for some flexibility in the interior walls.

 

[1911]

When you bury lines in the future, put down locating tape over the top of them. No more guessing where that water line is in the future.

Thanks for the idea, I had no idea there was any such thing as locating tape! It's magnetic I presume? I will look it up and buy some for sure.

 

[Ol Yeller]

Thanks for the idea, I had no idea there was any such thing as locating tape! It's magnetic I presume? I will look it up and buy some for sure.

We do this at work, the common yellow “caution buried electric line” is just poly but we do use foil detectable tape on fiber optic lines...so that would work for a poly water line that isn’t detectable.

 

[Rugy]

We also install the foil tape on our projects. We add a PT 2x6 on top with the cheap plastic up six inches from the foil tape because who know in the future situation. Also use different colours to show location of utlities on the permit drawings for an as build.
Saves a lot of grief years down the road.

 

[NCFJ]

There is an issue with the magnetic (metal) locating tape, at least this is what I was told by water system guys.

Several years back we had a huge lightning storm. It took out a couple trees on our property and it also cut the main water line running along our road in two places. Apparently lightning seeks out these metal strips enough when striking the ground that it is an issue. When they cam out to fix our water line the guys told me they had 11 water line breaks from this storm, many were blamed on the magnetic locator strip.

 

[AdventureToolCompany]

I recently went through this. The electrician suggested adding the yellow surveyors tape in the utility ditch about a foot from the surface so if we need to trench in the future we'll hit the tape before hitting the utility lines. Good luck!