Building a Shop - Execution Planning

I get that the topic of building a shop/garage may not be terribly applicable to many folks. There are whole chat rooms and websites dedicated to the topic, so what do I know. I accept that for most people you probably only ever build one, if that. So, for those who are thinking about it, maybe these posts are useful since I am a total noob documenting what I am learning as I go. There wasn't much to take pictures of so I included a shot I took from the roof of the house we rented in Mexico and one of Nina, showing the license plate registration year.

 

Survey?

sunset in Mexico

I mentioned in the last post about permitting that I talked to a senior inspector and he indicated that having clarity in the property line was important for a swift inspection prior to pouring concrete. I started pricing a general survey of the "back 50" and the numbers I was getting were disturbing: high 4 figures to find and mark the monuments (corner medallion perched atop a 3' long iron bar driven into the ground) and lines. I discovered that one of the guys I bang around on guitars with is a surveyor. He hit the county website and identified when the monuments were installed (1950) according to county records. Since this is the back of a few different peoples' properties, one would presume they had not been disturbed. So, he lent to us one of his metal detectors to find the iron bars.

 

When he offered a detector, I had a mental image of a speedo-wearing dude walking around the beach with one of those things with a big disc at the end of a stick, getting waved across the sand as he shuffled past, plucking up lost jewelry. Yeah, that's not a surveyor's detector. A surveyor's detector is purely magnetic, and only registers iron. So, since most of the fences around that part of the yard are wood, I was able to find most of the markers very quickly. The marker in the southwest corner, however, was buried by whoever put the wooden fence in, and that fence intersects an old cyclone fence made back when they had higher grade steel than the ones built today. So, that fence made the readings a little less clear, but I felt confident of what I identified as the corner pin.

 

For each marker that I found, I took one of the many white 10x20 canopy posts I have from the failed canopies and drove it over/around the marker. From these markers we could determine measurements. I could also assess the neighbor's fences and determined that the fence installers who buried the monuments also did not follow a straight line and the fence bows into our property by a couple of inches. Is what is, but it challenged our stringing a line between the posts. I was able to find monuments along all 3 of the sides of the back 50, however, so we can determine the positions for the excavation.

 

Concrete Bids

Nina

I also mentioned at the end of the prior post that we were soliciting bids for the concrete. I was not happy with the 3 bids we had, so I hit Yelp, looking for another one. Yelp has that little checkbox asking to include others, and I hit that too. After clicking send, I had second thoughts, full of visions of getting overwhelmed with spam, my phone blowing up, etc. Those were unfounded, though. I did find myself juggling 6 more concrete companies, but this allowed me to get far more competitive bids. All but one company made a site visit and had a conversation about the work, the distance from the street, and options for various aspects of the work. Including excavation, it will still run us in the neighborhood of $15k, though, so our vision of a concrete slab with a steel building sitting on it has a growing price tag approaching $40k... and it doesn't have a garage door nor lights nor gutters and downspouts yet. I did not account for any of the costs other than the building when I started this. I am learning that while the building is the largest single cost, it might only represent half of the overall cost once complete.

 

Ultimately, we went with one of the companies who did a site visit, and the company was on the lower end of the bid spectrum. Their bid was so competitive, we decided to have them do the excavation as well. We had intended to have our friend Glenn do the machine work while we helped with site lines, laser-level depth determination, etc. When I shared the bid with Glenn, he was very direct: have them do it.

 

Excavation Planning

future shop location

Even though we are hiring out the dig, there are a few things we need to have sorted before the machine shows up. The pitch of the site is only a few inches from west to east, but when the spec for the footer is 1 foot and for the floor to be 4 inches of concrete atop 4 inches of compacted gravel, a few inches makes a big difference. Since we get lots of rain here (newsflash: it rains in western Oregon), we felt it was very important for the floor to be above grade by at least an inch at the most uphill point, or the western edge. This meant that the soil at the most downhill only really needed excavation for the gravel, leaving most of the concrete above grade. Since I will be hauling / pushing inoperable vehicles into that garage, we elected to set aside a meaningful pile of extracted dirt for leveling in front of the garage after the concrete sets. I recognize that I will probably need to pour a concrete ramp eventually, but that is not on the permitted plan. At this point, we talked about digging a little bit extra on the west (highest) edge so after the concrete is in I could put in a french drain, routed over to the downspout plumbing and on to the storm outflow.

 

storm outflow site

The storm outflow also needed some thought. Recall, the storm outflow was required by Clean Water Services so storm water run-off from the roof doesn't become a water management problem for our (slightly) down-grade neighbors. The minimum size for a storm outflow is 4 feet by 8 feet by 18 inches deep, and they get larger as your building footprint grows. I don't know the rate of growth, but our 720 square foot building is still well below that threshold, so we get a minimum. Regardless of its size, it needs to be at least 15 feet (5 meters) from any neighboring property line. I had added it to my site drawing at the point closest to the southeast corner, 15 feet away from the lines. When I went to that location, I decided that it was too close to the large black walnut tree and digging there could damage the roots. So, we moved it 3 meters north, further into the property. This is still well within the property line proximity specification, and I will learn if the inspector cares about the storm outflow location accuracy regarding the site drawing or not when s/he/they inspect the site. In the image on the right, the outflow is marked with yellow tape. This is the new location. The tree in the right rear of the picture is the black walnut I am trying to protect.

 

Wrapping Up

We will be signing the agreement before the weekend, and with a gap in the concrete contractor's schedule, the excavation could start next week. This weekend, in order to make room, I will be pushing Nina (new-to-me yard-find 1964 VW Beetle, in the image above) out of the path to the build site and whatever else is necessary to make the job site as accessible as possible. Before you ask, no those are not US-spec tail lights, they are the euro-spec tail-lights with the yellow turn signal section. There are a few not-original-spec or missing-original items on this car, like the bumpers, but that's part of the discovery fun.

 

Boo and I are stunned that this is happening so quickly. If he hadn't had a gap in his schedule, we would probably be looking at 3 or 4 weeks. Those were the timelines I was getting from the other contractors and those schedules were filling. It seems that when the rain stops, pouring concrete is a nearly round-the-clock business, until it starts raining again. I recall the painting business was the same way back in the day when I did that.

 

After the job site is accessible, I will be trying to get Hapy to start again, with a 4th starter replacement. This time, I got a new Valeo starter as directed by TDI guru and great guy Justin. I hope this one will last longer than a few hours. For everyone's knowledge, I tried and got burned by...

(1) a rebuilt Bosch starter from a reputable online vendor, 

(2) a brand new "SEG" starter, apparently a rebrand of a good starter manufacturing company, from a different reputable online vendor and then 

(3) I had my original VW starter rebuilt by a highly regarded alternator and starter rebuilder in Portland's east side who has now retired.

All 3 failed within a few hours of installing. Since I used to be able to move Hapy around the driveway just by using his starter (yeah, I know. Don't do that kids), this is not a case of "it's Hapy's fault". No, there are just that many poorly built starters and these TDI engines need reliable hi-torque.

 

Thanks, as always, for following along.