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. 

Hapy Engine-Transaxle Dropped

Around the concrete work, I ordered a replacement flywheel, clutch and pressure plate from Kennedy Engineering for Hapy (TDI-powered 1972 VW camperbus). The flywheel entered fabrication early last week, so I spent part of the Independence Day weekend dropping and separating the engine and transaxle not-in-a-shop for hopefully the last time. Today's post covers the drop and separation; it took 10 hours spread across 2 days.

 

How Did We Get Here

hockey player smile

I have been queuing this most recent engine drop for over a year. Recall all of the starter swaps I have made in hopes of solving the intermittent starting issue. And, I replaced the starter adapter hoping that was the issue. Nope and nope. The flywheel had suffered sufficient incomplete meshing of the starter gear with the flywheel's ring gear, chipping teeth and wearing down others. During my research, I learned that oftentimes (not always) engines will tend to stop running at the same spot in their rotation. So, if the circle is 360 degrees, the engine will stop most of the time at the same point. I know that seems counter-intuitive when you assume an engine is a well-balanced smooth machine, but the 4 cylinders and the 4 steps in the combustion cycle create a frequency, if you will, that for some engines means that when you kill power it will naturally stop at the same point. In those cases, you would think having a complete ring gear is unnecessary, right? I mean, if you only ever use 15 degrees of gear, why have 360? Ok, in re-reading this, obviously you need an entire gear for the starter to spin the engine. LOL.

 

I found on my flywheel there was one spot in particular which was especially bad and 3 other spots which looked like there was wear, but not so much that the starter was really having trouble. This would explain why all the other times I looked at the flywheel I could not see an issue. The starter was not on the really bad spot, just one of the not-so-great spots. When I was unable to get the engine to start on the first try, but I got the gear-on-gear sound, I think I was starting on one of those spots. Inevitably, the engine would eventually land on the really bad one, and the sound would change from gear-on-gear to gear-in-the-air. 

 

Continuing this nonsensical thread, the TDI engine's flywheel can only fit on the engine one way, based on the bolt pattern. If there were any way I could have retained the flywheel and simply removed and re-installed it so that the really bad spot was in one of the zones where the teeth are never facing the starter at dead-stop... I would have. I mean, this flywheel has lasted 15 years of starting issues and abuse and for the most part it's fine. Well, fine except for the 1 big chunk that's missing and some other kinda-worn spots.

 

Getting Down

So, we enter Saturday, July 5th, the traditional first day Pacific NorthWest summer, tools in hand, blues festival on the radio, ready to get after the engine drop. To prepare, I re-read the last engine drop I can remember doing on this bus: to swap the transaxle from the original 002 to the AA Transaxle (Seattle) 1975 CM 002 transaxle. I did that on Labor Day 2012 in my real estate agent's driveway (See Transaxle Transition). It took 1 day to get the engine/transaxle out and separated. It took 1-1/2 days to get the new transaxle mated and the whole operation installed. I figured I would have a similar path, but my real estate agent's driveway was flat and smooth. The square of concrete outside my tiny garage is neither flat nor smooth. Quite the opposite, actually, it slopes away from the garage slightly and it has massive deep cracks in it. Like 2 or 3 inches deep cracks where blocks of concrete are lower/higher than the section next to it. This makes moving an engine on a jack much harder.

 

air disconnected

High level, my plan was to not raise the bus, and to only remove that which was necessary to allow me to separate the transaxle from the engine (and the bus) so I could do a clutch service with a flywheel swap out. So, I chocked the front tires and got after it. I started with the easier stuff: disconnect the air side first (cold air/filter to intake, unplugging the AFM and a vacuum line, then removed the charged air from turbo to intercooler). Then, the 13mm nut/bolts on the exhaust side of the turbo and removed the exhaust. Since I did not have to really move the engine other than up and down, I chose to leave the coolant related systems alone other than disconnecting the overflow bottle to prevent tension on the hoses. I made the same decision wit the fueling system, and chose to only disconnect the large filter, again to eliminate potential tension on the fuel hose. Last thing on the engine was to disconnect the battery and the 12V exciter from the alternator.

 

Shifting to the transaxle, I set a small jack under the center of the ribs and started removing things. First, I removed the CV joints and stuffed the greasy bits into plastic bags held on with rubber bands. The clutch cable and the mount for the bowden tube were next. Once free, I disconnected the shifter at the front of the transaxle, the grounding strap near the front and finished with the nose mount. At this point, the only things connected to the engine/transaxle I needed to address were the rear engine mount and the main carrier mounts.

 

simple coolant solve

I located and set the engine cradle on the ATV jack and supported the engine while I removed the rear mount and the tower between the support bar and the mount. With the engine supported, I removed the 2 bolts which attach the top of the bellhousing to the main center carrier.

 

Well, Now Its Down

This was all I thought I had to do to drop the engine. When I read the old steps, this was how far I had to go. Since then, however, I added the rear sway bar and it was set such that removing and then re-installing the transaxle was going to be more difficult. I removed the 4 14mm nuts that held the middle of the bar to the frame and it swung down far enough for the transaxle nose to clear. But there was not enough room for the shifter linkage above the side-to-side main support to clear. The engine needed to move backwards a couple of inches. So, I removed the rear engine support bar. In retrospect, I realized that I had removed that bar last time too. Now, I could pull the engine far enough back to get the transaxle off of the engine, rotated and then onto the ground. Sitting on cardboard, I pulled the transaxle out the driver side. I regret not taking a picture of the inside of the bellhousing, but it had so many little metal flakes (from the flywheel). I shot the bellhousing with brake cleaner and then, after I had wrapped the cv-joint mount points with plastic film, I shot the whole transaxle with de-greaser. I hosed it off and let it dry in the sun. While I had the de-greaser out, I cleaned the rear engine support bar too.

 

Pressure Plate and Flywheel

jack on crack

Now, I was basically ready for a clutch job. The pressure plate came off with little fanfare. It looks like its in great shape. The clutch still has most of it's friction material, so in a pinch I could probably reuse them. I got new replacements for both, so I may retain them for an emergency. Honestly, after 12 years of running this clutch and still have that much friction material left, I figure I may not have to replace this clutch ever again. I did notice a couple of spots on the flywheel which had a slight blue-ish hue, though. That's usually a sign that the clutch got hot and sticky. Something to think about. Maybe going with the stage 1 clutch this time rather than the stock pre-1972 VW bus clutch was the right call after-all, and the old clutch/pressure plate are not worth keeping.

 

Last, I had to pull the flywheel. Fortunately, I have a flywheel lock for old VW's and since this is a 200mm flywheel designed to fit inside a 002 transaxle, the lock fit. I could not get good leverage lying on my back under the bus so I smacked a rubber mallet against the end of a ratchet to pop the torqued bolt. All 6 came out without too much trouble. Applying a torque wrench on install will be interesting. Because of how snug the flywheel mates to the engine output, I needed to work the flywheel off with a small prybar. Once on the ground, I could more clearly identify the really badly worn spot (pictured above), but the other spots did not look as bad. Perhaps, once I have the new one to compare, the damage on this flywheel will be more apparent.

 

Conclusion

no downhill roll please

That's as far I've been able to get. I am still waiting for the flywheel, clutch, pressure place, throw-out bearing, etc. It took me most of 2 days to get to this point, so I expect the re-install will be similarly extended from 1-1/2 days to maybe 3. It is interesting to see how an uneven surface and 12 years of personal aging can slow a process down. The sway bar and engine support bars each represented maybe an hour of extra work, so I can't attribute it to them. This is probably really about me getting slower and the work location making everything that little bit harder.

 

For those tracking on the shop construction, we may be falling onto their schedule as early as the end of next week. Fingers crossed, I may have a structure before I have Hapy back in one piece. 

 

Anyway, that's it for today. Thanks, as always, for following along- 

Building a Shop - 106 Inspections and Concrete

Has it really only been a week? Between the daily news feeds, routines, managing brush and this construction project, days really just zip by. Today (24-June-2025), we got the concrete poured, but we had some inspection adventures along the way.

  

Inspection One

I brushed on the finishing of the rebar in my last post. The guys completed the work on Monday, June 16. In between were a few partial days around other projects to get the rebar set up and to dig out the trench and set in the PVC pipe for the lift controls. Feeling we were ready, I scheduled an inspection for Wednesday, June 18. Since this was the day before a US holiday (Juneteenth), my scheduled inspection was met with multiple other projects trying to get their inspections done before the weekend AND multiple inspectors deciding to call off, extending their respective weekends by another day. The result? The inspector was pissed before he got there, which is never a good set up for an easy inspection. We did not pass for 4 reasons:

1. rebar lying directly on the compacted gravel, not physically suspended 2" above
2. overlaps of rebar were not a minimum of 20"
3. rebar in footings supported by rebar driven directly into the ground 
4. type of PVC used (white, not grey) for the controls is not rated as electrical conduit

The rebar lying on the compacted gravel, while a fair observation, may not have been entirely fair. I have learned that it is a fairly common practice to lift the rebar as the concrete is poured. I am sure the inspector was right to point it out, remaining within the letter of the regulations. Ultimately, I want / need a floor that will not fail, so now that I've bashed him for not being fair, I'm good with it. I mean, even if the concrete pour-er does lift the rebar as they go, how do they decide how high and keep it relatively consistent? And then, when the concrete is super wet, what is to stop it from floating back down to the bottom anyway? So.. physically suspended makes sense.

Once the inspector explained that the overlap is what creates the strength at the transitions, I understood the 20" minimum overlap. This is especially important in the footings which will be supporting the weight of the building. Then, there's the rebar driven straight into the ground. The inspector felt that this would encourage premature rusting of the rebar as water would be in direct contact with the rebar beneath the concrete and rust would then leach up into the rebar within the concrete, eroding it's strength.

 

The last item about the PVC was 100% my fault. I watched numerous videos by homeowners installing their own lift in their existing garage floor and they used basic white PVC. The PVC is intended to house the hydraulic hoses for the lift plus the low voltage emergency shut off. Because the shotoff is electric, the PVC has to be rated for electrical conduit, which the white PVC is not. So, Wednesday night, I ran off to HomeDepot and got about 7 meters (20 feet) of 2" grey PVC conduit and a corresponding grey 90* bend.

 

Solving For Inspection One

wrong copper wire on left

On the afternoon of Juneteenth, Vai and his crew arrived, dressed for a barbecue, carrying bags of little concrete blocks. While a couple of his guys dug out the white pvc (under and around the rebar) and installed the grey, the other guys were removing the vertical supports and suspending the rebar on top of the little concrete blocks. In less than an hour, they had resolved all of the things that the inspector identified and then left for their family barbecue.

 

One last item that the inspector wrote down, but did not fail me for, was a suggestion to install an "Ufer". The inspector recognized that since I had something that required an electrical conduit, at some point I would need a good electrical ground. While an Ufer is becoming more common, most electrical installations are grounded with two 2 meters long grounding bars driven into the ground 10 feet or more from each other. An Ufer uses the rebar in the foundation as a ground and is an accepted grounding practice, provided the Ufer is tied into the foundation rebar at at least 3 points and the segment tied to the foundation rebar is at least 12 inches long. When I was getting the grey PVC, I got a 2 meter section of thick copper grounding wire for this purpose. I later discovered this was the wrong material.

 

Inspection Two

west footing cleared

I scheduled a follow-up inspection for Friday, June 20th and we had the same inspector we entertained on Wednesday. He knew exactly what he was looking for, so he went straight to the trouble spots. Rebar suspended above the gravel? Check. Overlaps at least 20 inches? Check. No rebar driven into the ground? Check. Grey PVC? Check. Ufer? Not quite. The inspector indicated that the Ufer needs to be rebar and that the grounding wire from the panel to the Ufer is the material that I was using. Doh! Kindly, he indicated that if I did the replacement with rebar and sent him a picture, we would get the approval for the grounding Ufer. He also pointed out that we had too much dirt in the bottom of the western footing. Again, he said if I fixed it and sent a picture of it cleared, we would get approved.

 

I found a section of rebar in the construction rubbish that had a 90* bend in it, was 14 inches long to one side of the bend and about 4 inches on the other. Basically, it was perfect for this purpose, so I tied it into the foundation rebar at 4 points, pointing the short end straight up, about 18" south of the northeast corner of the foundation. So no one tripped over it, I spray-painted it orange. Last, with a hand-held digger and a plastic cup, I cleared the western footing of debris. I sent pictures of these things (along the right side, here), and we got approved.

Concrete Pour

orange Ufer

With the approval in hand, we looked at calendars and weather projections. We wanted to pour on Friday, but we had a strong feeling (that was warranted) that we were going to get hit by rain. It rained on and off all day and the here and there all weekend, so we were right to delay.. to Tuesday, June 24th. The concrete pump arrived at 8, Vai's crew appeared shortly thereafter and the concrete truck arrived around 930. Vai's crew wanted to confirm the placement of the lift forms and they firmed them up with some cross-bracing against the exterior forms so they would not move during the pour. Then, they solved for what I had been referring to as "the wings" on the lift forms. In the drawing, there are 2" wide by 4-1/2" deep by 9" long channels that jut out from the front and rear of the main lift recess. These are for the supports for the ends of the lift when it is all the way down. Frankly, they look like tripping or tool-losing hazards for when the lift is up, so I may create some fills for when the lift is up. To create the 8 recesses, we combined a 2x6 (actual size 1-1/2 by 5-1/2) to an old fence board (3/4 by 5-1/2), cut into 9" sections and then rough-screwed onto the forms. While the wood bits are slightly wider and deeper than required, I felt that was a better situation for the arms to descend into than slots which were either too narrow or too short. If it becomes a thing, I will solve for it then.

 

gettin after it

Once the forms were ready, they started pumping concrete and in about an hour the footings, and floor were poured. I went out to pay the concrete truck and Vai's guys were finishing the last of the floor with barrows of concrete. Somewhere along the way, one of his guys rotated the Ufer into the concrete, so we fished that out. While it's no longer orange.. it's more concrete color.. I am glad I asked about it. This serves as a reminder to check everything as you go. While they are the experts, you ultimately own it. Government inspection is to make sure no one gets hurt and it's structurally sound. Any small error that doesn't get into inspection territory is yours to verify. Anyway, Vai's crew stayed for a few hours floating it smooth and monitoring the concrete. The result at the end of pour-day is pictured at the top. Now, we wait for it to cure and then we can move forward with the steel building on top of it.

 

Wrap Up 

That's it for today. I don't have any car content as I honestly have not had any time to play on the cars this past week. Around managing the concrete work, Boo and I have been clearing brush around the tool sheds and weeds along the eastern and southern sides of the new shop space. I am still waiting for the new flywheel and clutch/pressure plate from Kennedy. I hope to have them in time for Independence Day weekend so I can do the engine-trans R&R over those 3 days.

 

As always, thanks for following along-