The Quarky Engineer

While it was a cold day, the afternoon was surprisingly clear. Main level walls are starting to materialize.

Some subflooring is starting to materialize. Those 1&1/8 T&G plywood sheets are pretty heavy. The sheeting should be done today, then more floor joists over the mechanical room and storage room, plus all of the floor joists over the deck.

More walls have appeared and floor joists are being installed. Once the first level floor is installed, the upper
walls will go up quick. The shop looks quite tall from the inside. It is only a couple of feet more than my current shop ( 14.5 feet vs 12 feet), but that is noticable.

Clearly I will need a forklift.

The last couple of weeks were a bit slow on the house front. Cold and lots of wind on site.

Some of the floor joist i-beams were delivered, along with some other joists and boards.

You can see they have started to put up plywood, and due to wind they will probably try to get most of that done before starting on the joists.

With Audrey to scale, the shop certainly looks to be a good size.

Oil pickup, baffle, and pan installed. Thanks to Killer B for making cool stuff for a cool build.

We have walls.

While we were in Hawaii the concrete guys finished the lower garage floor as well as the upper garage.

The upper garage floor was pretty straightforward, although it ended up being a bit thicker than originally planned. It is right a 6 inches at the garage door, but about 9 inches thick at the house. No downside other than a tad extra cost.

The lower floor garage turned out great, with two drains.

At the interface of the garage door we added a small depression to serve as a catch for water and snow dragged in my cars.

We did the same technique for the shop floor, which is completely flat. The asphalt outside this door will slope away from the shop, and this lip has a slight slope towards the door.

We also have the second round of galvanized steel beams delivered and installed. These hold up the rear deck.

Some wood for the framers was also delivered… And the framers got a start on the cap boards on the top of the foundation. The sill plates are done in a way I have not seen before. The pressure treated board against the concrete is a 3×6 (so called 3x Sill), and I expect that is for shear requirements. The second on third boards encapsulate the bolt, which has a steel plate instead of a simple washer. The sill plates are this design for the entire house.

House update – Pouring underway.

This morning we poured the shop floor, the lower rooms, and the upper garage floor. (~70 yards). Tomorrow AM we will pour the lower garage floor.

It will take most of the rest of today to do the finishing work on the floors poured.

The lower garage floor is interesting, as we are using these metal pieces called Combiforms that are laser set to get an exact slope from all four corners into the two drains. They are made by a Swedish company, and are used a bit more in Europe.

This is the 5th day of having a pump truck onsite during the build, so tomorrow should finish out the 6th and final pour, at least until we do flatwork next fall.

A small house update:

4 of the horizontal beams have been installed and leveled. These beams will support the joists for the upper floors, so they are critical to get installed for framing to start. The bigger rear beams for the back deck are being galvanized, and should be ready for install in a few weeks.

We hope to have a pause in the weather the next few days, long enough for us to pour the lower floors. The concrete guys have setup the screed rails, which is not something I have personally seen before. I believe it makes it easier and faster for them to keep the top final surface level.

They have also installed these small steel dowel bars that go across the area they will cut after the pour. As I understand it they grease one side of the bars, and after the cut this allows the slab to move a little bit and prevent cracking elsewhere. I don’t recall seeing this in my current garage floor, although this is a larger floor with far more rebar.

Hopefully tomorrow we will pour two of the garage floors and the storage room, mechanical room, server room, and vault. This will leave one remaining garage floor for Friday.

House Update – Some of the steel vertical posts were installed today. The second picture which shows the two posts at the very back of the shop give a good idea of how high up the first floor is, and how high the ceiling will be in the shop. It looks taller than it did on paper.

Tomorrow or Friday should bring some of the steel cross members.

A quick fly around: