The Cook Shed

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We were a bit worn out after two days of assembly so we set a modest goal yesterday of getting the last post and the middle 15' tie beam placed. There was no way to get the tractor in to lift the tie beam directly into position so I had to get a little creative again with the forks and some 4x4s. It actually went together easier than I thought although those fully housed tie beam joints are very tight. Using ratchet straps and a little sledgehammer persuasion and they eventually hit home. That went well enough that we decided to go ahead and put the second 24' beam into place. Given that the cook shed site is built up a couple of feet in the front my tractor fork tips could just barely get that beam over the post tenons; we literally only had a couple of inches to spare. Thankfully though it did work. What a great feeling when that last beam went into place. Three days to erect what took over three weeks to prep. Not too bad considering that there was just two of us the last two days.

I still have to finish driving in all the pegs but it's nice to have all the posts and beams up to the 10' level. The plan now is to get the slab poured. Need to get the imbedded sections of electrical conduit installed and hopefully get the concrete poured in the next few days. I still have to finish the ridge beam and its associated king posts (3) and knee braces (4). Not keeping score per se but that's only 11 mortise and tenon joints left out of a total of 54 for the building!

I'm also changing directions on the rafters. I bought rough sawn 2x8s to the same marine treatment spec but after erecting the massive 8x8 posts and beams I am concerned that they are going to look a little light. Not that they aren't plenty large enough for the span but maybe not in keeping with the scale of everything else. Currently getting pricing and availability of larger lumber from my Gulf Coast supplier.

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Impressive work! I've always loved this construction design and have longed after it by living vicariously in YouTube.

I've been in the high-level design phase for a barn to house toys and office, but as quick as this construction style entered my head it was forced out by the voice of reason. You make it look easy, so now you've got me thinking again 🤔

Keep up the great progress. Exciting as I play catch up.
 
JLawson said:
Nice job! That's gonna be a good looking cook shed for sure. I think you are dead on with your rafters needing more girth. Size and proportion are key. Some nice 4x8's will fit right in. maybe increase the spacing and use purlins to mount your roof?
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Thanks. Thinking 4x10 or 4x12 on either 36” or 48” centers. Need to take into consideration the roof decking though. Maybe 5/4 tongue and groove?
 
Finished all the pegs yesterday. I wasn't able to drive the two pegs in for the rear center post, full faced, tie beam connection. I hadn't really considered the interference from the center post knee braces that go from the center post to the 24' rear beam. The only way to have been able to hammer them in would have been to install the two center posts and associated tie beam before installing the rear 24' beam. That would have been easy enough with a crane but not so much with a fork lift. No worries though, I broke out my porta power hydraulic kit, built a triangle brace assembly to go in the knee beam to press against, and pushed the pegs in 1/2" at a time. Very tedious but it worked.

Big day today and tomorrow. Concrete crew will frame today and pour tomorrow morning. Took me much longer than anticipated to backfill and tamp all the fill dirt around the 6 posts. Arms are a little tired this morning. I also had to install three PVC electrical conduits and moved around 4 or 5 yards of #57 stone into place. We are using around 6" of stone under the slab which should take somewhere around 6 yards. They will spread the stone and tamp it down using a vibrating sled. I will bring in whatever extra they need on the go. I mentioned the dimensions before but the outside of posts are 15x20. We are going to frame up 1' outside the posts for a total slab dimension of 17x22. There will be a 7.5"x12" step down across the front so total concrete area will be 17x23.

After a little consultation with the concrete guy and the :princess:, we all agreed on 6" of 4000 psi fiber mesh reinforced concrete with a 6" turndown around the perimeter (12" total thickness on the edges for ~ 1'). The posts make using wire mesh problematic and the fiber mesh shouldn't be an issue with the finish as we are going hard hand troweled on this slab. There is no need for rebar around the perimeter as the posts are taking all the load. They will frame for the slab with a 1% slope towards the front (2" total drop back to front). The top of the step down will get a very light broom finish. There was a lot of discussion about cut joints. I generally try to minimize them but I have never poured a slab with wood posts imbedded. Concrete guy has done many post frame buildings and convinced us to use a very interesting cut pattern radiating from the posts. Hard to describe so I will just post photos when it's done.

Electrical design is rather modest. There will be 3 outlets on the inside of the rear posts and 3 switched circuits: main lights, ceilings fans (2), and a switched outlet up top for the obligatory perimeter warm bulb string lights. Every cook shed has to have either string lights or at minimum some kind of Christmas lights year round.

The main outside breaker panels on our house are on the left hand side looking up from the cooking shed. The feeder cable will run under the house (our house is on piers) and exit underground right of center in the rear of the house. The water and power for the shop exit there so I will run power and water from the same place. If nothing is plugged into the outlets, the max power draw for the lights and ceiling fans is under 5 amps. The cable run will be around 250' and the voltage drop for 5 amps is only 2.2% for a 10/2 cable. I will make it a 20 amp circuit as there could be occasion where a power tool or something is pulling high amps. A 20 amp load calculates to an 8.8% voltage drop which does exceed the NEC recommended max of 5% but I think it will be so rare to need that much amperage that an 8/2 cable isn't justified.

I installed a 1" PVC conduit for the main feed in. That conduit will also have a 12/2 out going to the post outlets and possibly a direct bury fiber optic cable coming in. I dropped down to 3/4" PVC for the other two posts for the feeds to the outlets. For now these are just vertical conduit place holders with a 90 sweep and a 1' stick of PVC 18" below top of slab.

I have 4 Unifi access points in my house and the coverage is excellent both inside and for some distance outside the house. I usually get around 2 bars of WiFi at the cook shed area but thought I should future proof things with the fiber optic cable as long as I had a ditch open. I also don't have WiFi at my shop which is about another 250' from the cook shed so maybe there is a future project to extend an access point into the shop. These runs are borderline too long for CAT5/6, so this idea would involve CAT to Fiber converters. This idea is embryonic at this stage but I'm trying to make sure I at least make accommodation for it in the future.

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Concrete pour went really well yesterday. I missed most of the action as my wife was having a rotator cuff repaired - which also went really well. By the time we got home from the hospital the crew were well into the finishing process. I had asked them to do a hard hand trowel finish so they were there until late afternoon. The hand cut control joints turned out really well. Again, I try to always minimize control joints but I was assured that without something off every corner of these posts that the concrete would crack due to even the slightest movement in the posts. It will still crack of course but hopefully now it will crack along those joints and not somewhere else. I have to say I was very apprehensive about the suggested pattern but I really like it now that it's done.

Right after the crew left my son and I wrapped the slab in 4mil plastic sheeting to retain moisture. This morning I could see that the sheeting did a great job keeping in the moisture overnight. I flooded the slab this morning and will do that a couple of times a day for the next 10 days plus. So many people skip the moisture curing step which is absolutely essential to minimize shrinkage cracking and to ensure maximum concrete strength.

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Sheeting this morning before flooding:

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And after the first "watering":

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I'd have wrapped the posts in something. The constant contact with concrete rots even pressure treated lumber.
 
PAToyota said:
I'd have wrapped the posts in something. The constant contact with concrete rots even pressure treated lumber.
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These posts (as well as all the other timbers) are treated to saltwater splash marine spec, 0.80 CCA (chromated copper arsenate). These are not your typical HD or Lowes "ground contact" 0.15 MCA (micronized copper azole) boards. This treatment spec is normally specified for beach houses (and other structures on the beach) with the posts imbedded in concrete slabs.

FWIW the posts are set on 6" of tamped rock and backfilled to the bottom of the slab with tamped structural fill dirt. That method ensures that the posts don't retain moisture.
 
Taking me longer than I anticipated to source the larger rafters so it might be a while before the rest of the shed is completed. In the meantime my son and I are actively discussing his vision for the "pit" which is turning into quite a hybrid. Hopefully we can get to a final plan during his visit in a couple of weeks.

I have often mentioned moisture curing, in this thread and others. I know that it helps prevent shrinkage cracks from forming and I also knew that it resulted in stronger concrete but I never did any research on how much stronger. I ran across this set of curves for typical 4000 psi concrete the other day and thought I would share it here. For those that don't know, 4000 psi concrete means that it has to have at minimum 4000 psi compressive (load bearing) strength in 28 days after pouring.

I'm 8 days in with my moisture curing regime and will probably go at least 21 days and maybe as long as 28 but won't go beyond that. Again, the slab is covered with plastic and all I am doing is taking a few minutes twice a day to run a hose under the plastic in 3 or 4 places to keep the top of the slab saturated.

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Well the good new is I finally sourced the 4x12 rafters in a 0.80 CCA spec. The bad news is for some reason my contact in Gulf Shores either couldn't or wouldn't get them for me. So now I have to go an hour plus on the other side of New Orleans to what I assume is a wide spot in the road called Cut Off, Louisiana. I think part of the issue I was having was quantity. I'm going to put these on nominal 36" centers so I only need 18. I'm also going to repurpose the 2x8-12' boards I had originally bought for rafters and use them for roof decking. I also ordered 2 2x8-24s and 33 2x8-16s for the balance of the decking. All of these are also rough cut in 0.80 CCA spec. I will use the 24' boards at the bottom so there won't be a visible seam at the eaves. The 12s and 16s will be staggered through the balance with obviously some of the 16' cut in half. None of those seams will be visible. I would have bought all 24s but they are disproportionately more expensive than the 16s.

Obviously this is all overkill from a structural standpoint but I think it's going to finish off the Cook Shed perfectly.

Youngest son is here all next week so we will be finalizing (hopefully) the pit plans. Will likely go get this lumber the following week and get started on finishing the structure.
 
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Long day today but got there and back with the lumber. Having a beer or two and chilling out. So I can check visiting Cut Off, Louisiana off my bucket list. Did stop at a roadside take out for a shrimp Po Boy. It was worth the stop. No pics...I was hungry.

Now these are rafters. I ordered 4x12x14 but they loaded 4x12x16 since they were out of 14s. Not as heavy a load as the first run to the coast but I still knew the trailer was behind me.......all the time. Thought about how to get those in place without killing ourselves all the way home. No brilliant conclusions short of renting a crane.

Heading out of the country for a few weeks in a little over a week so I'm guessing I won't get much done until after we get back.

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PAToyota said:
I'd have wrapped the posts in something. The constant contact with concrete rots even pressure treated lumber.
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Most excellent work sir.
Love the look and the precision joinery.

I concur with @PAToyota about wrapping the posts, but for a different reason.
Twisting. Luckily, or maybe by design you have the control cuts in the right place.
A common practice when imbedding wood in concrete is to use ten-test (low density fiber board) as a barrier to allow for wood movement.

As long as the bottom of the post is not encased in concrete the post will be able to dry out when it gets wet.
 
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