Entrenched

It's been a couple of months, and busy ones at that, so today's post will be a bit of a mish-mash covering the highlights.

 

Farm House Fireplace

fireplace surround primed

First, I am realizing that I never posted on our idea to change a blank wall in our living room to have a fireplace. We live on a street with overhead power lines, and we lose power once or twice a winter to ice and wind. We sourced a (Valon H5) gas fireplace and had it installed against and in the middle of that wall in March or April. Being near the end of the cold season, we only fired it up a couple of times. It does not have a fan, so we will be covered in an electrical outage, but we were impressed with how much heat it produces at a low setting and how far from the unit you can feel the warmth.

 

After absorbing that cost, we got our contractor friend, Ray, to do the side job of putting some kind of built-in around it. He did that work a day here and a day there, ultimately finishing at the end of July. I spent this last weekend doing the paint prep and brushing on a coat of primer. I expect to return to that work in a couple of weeks, sanding the primer fixing all the little holes and such that I missed and then applying more paint.

 

Shop Progress

closest thing to "before" image

In an inspired moment in late-July, I emptied the black rolling tool cabinet, pulled it across my hard-as-a-rock clay backyard and into the shop. Once there, I vacuumed it out, Armor-All cleaned it, set it in place and then returned its contents. That represented the last of the things that needed to move. I since have worked through most of the heap, putting like things together on shelving.

 

Electric Hum

While Ray was working on the built in, we noticed that our main electrical panel would hum when his air compressor fired up. We thought that was probably not good and showed him. He agreed and soon we had his go-to electricians over to see what we had going on. The humming breaker ought to have flipped, not hummed. So, soon we were getting the main panel replaced and some outlets fixed and some other lighting things solved. Once we were in that deep, Boo asked them what the incremental cost would be to running electricity out to the shop. Love her. They made us a great deal ($1600US for an active circuit, 60-amp sub-panel wired from the main through conduit in the trench), but the numbers hinged on the trench being dug, and the work starting about a week later.

 

Trenching

cave-in at the turn

This is the lead-in that found me running a 24" trencher on a Monday morning. The weekend before I had cleared all the mulch and other undergrowth, shrubs, etc along the approximate 100' path. I also needed to hand-trench around the french drain I had installed around the shop last summer. Once cleared, I marked the future trench line with spray paint. I rented a trencher from HomeDespot, not because I love that store, but because they had the best-by-far price (like half what everyone else offered) and they would deliver /pick up. So, with that trencher, I dug 100' of 24" deep trench. Considering how many Holly trees, wild roses and other things we have found in this yard, I was prepared for a long difficult day.

 

The trenching started difficult enough. I thought I would do the line from the garage down to the 90* turn south first. That meant starting the trench up against the garage where I found the first foot below the surface was bricks and chunks of concrete. Fortunately, once I was able to get that cleared, the rest of that east-running line was uneventful. I got as far east as I could go, setting my back up to the neighbor's fence and then wrestled the machine to face north. These trenchers do not turn at all easily, you have to muscle them by lifting and shoving. So, once facing north, I started trenching southward, leaning and pushing west to offset the slight pitch of the yard.

 

future trench line

The next 40 or so feet (almost 15 meters) were efficient. I did not hit big roots until I got to the apple tree just outside the shop's main door. Even then, I only need the sawzall to cut a pair of thick roots. The trencher took care of the rest. Once I got to the 90* turn west to get to the shop wall, I wrestled the machine so I was facing west, moved it up to hand-trenched section and ran it east until I hit the fence. Similar to the other end of the long trench, I could not connect the big trench with the shorter sections without trenching in both directions. This meant wresting the machine over a trench at some point. Inevitably, those moves caused cave-ins. Still, the main trench work was completed, so I ran the trencher out to where it was dropped off at the start of the rental and hosed it off.

 

After work on Tuesday, I was out at the trench with a disposable plastic "go food" container, hand scooping out the cave-ins. I discovered that my last "cave in" was actually an incomplete trench where it turned 90* south near the garage (see 3rd picture from the top). I had to finish that trench by hand. It was at that point that I really appreciated the trencher. The clay soil in the backyard is as hard as a rock at this time of year. So just clearing less than a foot deep, maybe 18" long trench was a considerable effort. I was already beat-to-shit from wrestling a trencher in nearly 90*F (32*C) heat the day before and Tuesday was just as hot.

 

black "rollie" in the shop

We passed inspection for the trench this week. So, I will be filling the trench back in and then I will be able to move cars in and out of the shop again. While I did not plan to lose access to the shop this summer, I am so grateful for having electricity, even if it is just a sub-panel with no outlets nor circuits. We will be that much closer to having lights without depending on a partially buried 100 foot extension cord running from the old garage. And, once the trench is filled back in, I only would have had the path blocked for maybe a month.

 

We had a different inspector than we have had with our other inspections. This guy was a bit of a hard-ass relative to the others and inauthentic. I only bring that up because what he said to me and what he put into his report were not the same. He said everything was good except he needed some detail around a ground for the water heater (which wasn't in the scope of the work, but whatever). The report identified a bunch of other things that he never mentioned and were also outside the scope of the work performed. Needless to say, I'm unimpressed and hope he doesn't inspect anything around here again. I would have no reason to trust what he says, and expect him to add things to his report after leaving, including things which may have nothing to do with what's within the scope of the permit. Inauthentic sucks.

 

Wrap 

This got long, and I never got to any car stories. There are a few. I'll post on them, and whatever new ones happen, next time. Thanks, as always, for following along-

Building a Shop - Steel Building Erected

First, my apologies for how infrequent my posts have been. The team I work on lost a team member to a promotion and the replacement has not been very successful. As a result, I have been doing the job of 2 people since the start of the year. This removed pretty much all of my slack time at work so lots of things have fallen by the wayside. Take, for example, Hapy, the 1972 VW Camperbus sitting in my driveway. The transaxle is still out, the engine is still on the ground and he has been that way for weeks. Anyway, this is where we are.

 

Oregon Carports

I will start with a call out to the fine folks who I worked with to get the building in the first place. From start-to finish, everyone connected with Oregon Carports and their parent company US Steel Buildings were great to work with. All communications were prompt, email did not sit unanswered for more than a couple of hours and honestly they spent more time waiting for me than I did for them. We arranged build-day around their other jobs, but the crew arrived within 15 minutes of our intended start time (early afternoon 15-July) even though they were driving from California. A 3 person crew arrived in a crew cab truck hauling a long trailer. They backed into the lane-way along the eastern fence and immediately got after it.

 

We had our fair share of hot days this Summer and this stretch of days was no exception. By 5PM it was over 100*F (38*C), but they were not relenting. I supplied them with ice and water from the fridge and encouraged them to not push too hard. They pushed hard anyway. They left around 7PM and were back the following morning by 7AM. They pushed through and completed the building by dark on the 16th. They did not want to spend another night at a hotel in Oregon and instead pushed towards home when they were done.

 

facing North from inside

In transparency, we did a complete walk-through and before I could spot things, the job lead was pointing things out to his crew to resolve. We had originally designed the building to have a person-door on the front, but when they were doing the work I didn't like the design. So, after a quick call with Oregon Carports, the door was removed, my invoice adjusted and we moved on. Very easy.

 

Rain Water Management

With the building in place, my next challenge was around managing storm water when the rains inevitably return. I had received a coupon for those gutters you don't need to clean, so I had them come over and sell me. To my surprise, they could not design a gutter system that would work. It turns out that the design of the building, or should I say the design of the steel framing of the building does not leave anything near the roof line to attach a gutter that could have any kind of warranty. Sure, they could slap some gutters up there, but if ice forms, or if there is a heavy downpour filling the gutters, there was not enough strength behind the soffits to support and the gutters would fail... and then fall. So.. I needed a new plan.

 

Building Final Inspection

trenching

While musing over the gutters, I thought we were ready to have a final inspection and be done with the county. I was mistaken. I scheduled the inspection and while the building construction passed, he could not pass the job as final. The building did not have any doors, and had large openings where they would eventually go. I explained that we plan to have doors, but everything is so expensive lately, those plans are on hold for a while. He indicated that the building needs doors and the people door on the north face will need a landing or step since the building was a little over 7 inches above grade at that point. He assured me that once the doors were on, final inspection would be a quick confirmation. Meanwhile, the permit stays active and open without penalty. The reasoning around the doors is that the building has certain specs around wind resistance and those numbers do not hold up when it lacks doors / is not sealed. The inspector had no interest in gutters. They were never on the plan, and the plan was approved without them, so that tracks. It just seemed odd.

  

Trenching

I figured that if I could not catch the rain at the roof's edge with a gutter system, I would dig trenches along the eastern and western sides of the building, and install french drains to manage it. That sentence took about 15 seconds to type and the better part of 3 weeks to execute. I started with taking lots of measurements to determine how deep I would need to go, and made 2 sets of plans. Plan 1 was to route the water from the eastern and western edges back to the rear of the building and then into a storm outflow I had dug out when the foundation was done. This plan would have required the southwest corner to be dug down nearly 2 feet to account for the ground pitching from southwest to northeast.

installing pipe

Plan 2 was to dig the trenches towards the front of the building, cut across the future vehicle egress and into an abandoned well on the property about 40 feet away from the northern edge of the building. While this plan involved more linear feet of trench and more pipe, the trenches would not need to be nearly as deep, digging down no more than 9 inches from end to end. I decided plan 2 made more sense, and proceeded to trench 30 feet along each side, 24 feet across the northern edge and then another 40 feet from the north east corner diagonally across the future driveway to the abandoned well.

 

Drain Pipe 

Into these trenches, I laid french drainpipe wrapped with filter sock. The trenches along the sides of the building got the less expensive flexible pipe. These pipes cannot withstand much weight, but being right along the building, I would not expect them to. Across the northern front of the building and across the driveway, I used the hard pipe which is designed to handle considerably more weight. Still, these pipes were 6 inches below grade, so weight would be somewhat distributed. The last 20 feet between the driveway and the well, I used flexible standard pipe (not french drain) as this passed through a garden area. Practically all of the rest of the pipe was french drain wrapped in filter sock. I added a drain clean out in the northeast corner.

 

Grading and Graveling 

graveling

With the pipe down, I could see that there were some spots along the building where water could slip past the pipe and run away from the drainage system. To remedy, I used fill dirt from the foundation dig to build up the downhill areas from the drain pipes. As I layered in silty clay, I watered it in so it would not wash away during the first rain (it didn't). Satisfied, I ordered 4 yards of 3/4=1-1/4 drainage gravel delivered into the laneway, about 75 feet from the building. With a shovel and a wheelbarrow, I filled the building-adjacent trenches and the small valleys I dug along the trenches, creating a gravel stripe about half a meter wide.

 

One Small Step

steppin up

With the trenches done and filled in at least as far as the front of the building, I started after the step or landing that the inspector required. I looked up the code and the step needed to be at least 1 meter square (width of the door, square). I decided to make it bigger, running from the corner of the building to the edge of where the driveway egress would start, and then make it the required 3 feet deep. I used some outdoor grade 1 by 8 we had lying around with a couple of 2 by 4's for corner re-enforcement and drove it into the ground. After checking level and stuffing some rocks underneath to hold it level, I put a layer of melon-sized rock on the bottom and filled it with some of the drainage gravel I had.

 

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This is getting long, so I'll stop here. I will say that the work on shop/barn/building/garage has been my sole focus this summer. So, almost no car work has happened at all after the grand dismantling of Hapy over Independence Day weekend. I did spend a different weekend replacing the oil pan in my niece's Jetta TDI after she drove over a tree stump, but that's just being an uncle. It took a weekend because I had to go get the car from the middle of the woods where it was left, drained of oil, so yeah, it actually took a weekend. I will go into more detail on Hapy's flywheel replacement effort once it reaches a Hapy conclusion.

 

Thanks, as always, for following along.