I had originally planned to have a pit built but since obtaining planning permission I have done a little research and decided against it. I cut down 10 trees about 18 months ago and left the stumps in the ground at the time. I had to hire an excavator to remove them and dig out the foundations. Today I looked at hiring a cement mixer and decided that I would be cheaper in the long run buying one
Here are a few pictures of the slow progress
Front Elevation
Plan (not building the pit now) (on the lookout for a ramp)
The Plot
Work has started
I even managed to persuade my daughter to work
My tree stumps
Before the foundations were poured
My new toy
Things are coming along nicely with the foundations in and below ground brickwork in progress at the moment.
This was meant to be the pit, but because it was below the water table level I have decided to abandon the idea. 10 tree stumps were removed from this area which meant disturbing the ground more than I had hoped, plus the pit was going here and I ended up with this massive hole so that I had a solid footing for the base.The yellow line is where the founds have still to be built up to bring them level with the ground at the front of the garage.
This is the overall size,. It looks small at the moment but once the ground has been backfilled and levelled it will start to take shape
Looking at the plans I have to now start thinking about doors. The single is about 2700mm wide and the double is about 5800 wide so no off the shelf doors for this project.
After a weekend of back filling I have managed to get all the soil into the foundations of the garage.
I never thought this would happen as there semed to be more soil that what would fit in the hole.
I must say though I am pleased as I would rather buy some extra hardcore than have to load a skip with clay
First of my vehicles to go in is the Range Rover......does this make it a real off-roader !amazed
The central post has to be moved about a foot left to make the single door easier to access
Slowly the walls are getting higher and at the end of play last Sunday we were almost half way.
Whilst working away last week I had to arrange scaffolding to allow the brickies to reach their work.
If you have never hired scaffold before, I recommend you don't try....it is a complete nightmare.
The first company I contacted said they could supply me but then never got back to me and after several voicemail messages were left on their phone I decided to go to plan B.....
Plan B
I have a mate who is the manager of a scaffold company in Dundee and I called him and asked if he knew of anyone in the Glasgow area. As it happens, the company he works for have a place in Glasgow so he called the manager who phoned me straight away.
Yes we can do that for you, I will email you what I think you need and you can let me know if it is correct.... Well I don't know one piece of scaffold from another so I called him the next day and said that was fine, and asked if he could deliver it by Friday. I was told it would be there on Friday morning just after 09.00am but I would need to fill in the form. I went from St Andrews to Dundee (where my mate works) and filled in the relevant paperwork and my mate faxed it through to Glasgow.
Glasgow called Dundee to ask for a copy of my drivers license and a copy of a utility bill.... Now I don't know about you but I don't carry utility bills around with me!!!! I had my license copied and it was faxed through and Glasgow called again, I need to leave a deposit, my mate guessed it would be around £250 which I thought reasonable, but no....Glasgow wanted £1000 deposit. At this point I told my mate not to bother as the scaffold was worth about £700-£800 and I was not prepared to leave that sort of money for them. A call to head office and I was told that if I left £500 deposit that would suffice. I left the money and left feeling that at least the scaffold would be there for the weekend.
On Wednesday I received a call asking again for a utility bill....WTF... and as I had explained before that I was away from home I couldn't get one. Eventually my wife faxed one through and a few hours later I was told that everything was fine and they had opened an account for me.......(after all they did have £500 belonging to me)
On Thursday I had a call from the manager at Glasgow to say it could not be delivered until Friday afternoon and as there was nobody at home at that time the manager would come over from his office and check and sign the paperwork himself.
Ok I said, that will work as I don't need it till Saturday so that will be fine.
On Friday at 1.15pm I received a call from said manager to say that both their trucks had broken down and they could not deliver, I could still have the scaffold if I collected it......Now by this time I am in Dornoch, some 200+ miles from home. I was not at all pleased and called my mate in Dundee who contacted head office and explained the situation.
Eventually it was decided that the manager from the Edinburgh branch would come from Edinburgh with their truck on Saturday morning, through to Glasgow and collect my scaffold from the Glasgow depot and deliver it to me at around 11.00am.
I called the brickie and explained what had happened and said that he might be better starting a little later and the scaffold would be there by 11.00am.
On Saturday the manager of Edinburgh arrived at 11.00 and dropped off the said items and I received a call form my wife to say it had arrived, but the builders had not turned up. I called the builder but the call went straight to voicemail and I left a message, called again at the end of the day and left a second message. Called on Sunday and left a third message.....Now I was ticked off......
This Thursday I called the brickie once again and he said he had been taken ill and had to go to hospital.... On Friday the second brickie arrived at the house to apologise and said he would be out on Saturday.
Glad to say one brickie turned out this Saturday and on Sunday he turned up with a labourer so we should be back on track very soon....
One brickie and the labourer arrived today and we are now back on track
At the end of play today we at last are getting somewhere....
This is the height to the bottom of the roof trusses
Getting there Rich, I have been told to make room for a bed in it.....
A big thanks to hoody for giving me a hand unloading the roof trusses on Thursday morning, the weather could not have been any wetter as a torrential downpour started about 7.00. We held off unloading until about 8.30 and it was slightly drier....but not a lot.
Have you dried out yet hoody?
Another weekend over and the builders decided to arrive on Saturday as planned, however they told me that they wouldn't be on Sunday as the football season had started :duh:
What is the world coming to when everything stops for a game of football........
With one truss in place to use as a template for the builders everything is moving along.....including neighbours I never knew I had......
I received a call today from Building Control regarding the scaffolding being unsafe (someone complained) by email. I explained to the officer that the builders were on top of it on Saturday and it now has a truss tied to it and it looks safe enough to me.....(see picture below)
Next the door bell rang and it was someone complaining that their garden was flooded at the weekend......As if it was my fault....
How come when you contact each and every neighbour regarding planning permission for a garage, none of them complain......until the actual build work starts....... :aaargh:
A couple of weeks since I have posted anything about the garage so here goes
Roof trusses delivered a couple of weeks ago and hoody kindly assisted in the pouring rain to unload them from the truck and stack them in the back yard. They had to be ordered early to allow the brickies a template for building the gable ends. Yesterday I had 90 sq m of sarking delivered for the roof and some timber for the wallplate. Today the plan was to fit the wallplate and start fitting trusses but the wet summer weather has put the brakes on that plan.
Feeling on a bit of a downer with the rain I looked ahead at what was still to be done. I need hardcore for the garage floor before I can pour the concrete. My back yard is covered in concrete, lots of it which will need to be dug up and removed before I can level and repave the drive and yard I contacted a company who hire concrete crushers and they visited me. It seems I could save a lot of money by crushing the existing concrete and using it as hardcore.
So now the dilemma is breaking the old concrete into pieces the size of bricks. Do I hire a breaker or buy one. A quick check at the cost of hiring followed by a trip to Makro and I had made my mind up
My new toy....
The crusher is a great bit of kit but too expensive to buy so I will be hiring it.
Check out the movie on the crusher, it’s a great bit of kit
Concrete Crusher (requires a QuickTime player)
I bit the bullet yesterday and bought a Youngmans Minimax scaffold tower. Normally I wouldn't have went to these extremes just for building the garage, but with a hedge which is about 12 feet high and growing and my memory of the last time I cut the hedge doing a balancing act with ladders and the Sthill hedge trimmer, I think it is a good investment.
I have spent the last two days fitting the wall plate to the garage. The wall plate is the timber on top of the wall and steel beam to which the trusses are attached.
I had to drill fifty 10mm holes in the beam and bolt the wall plate onto it. Weather permitting I am hoping to start fitting trusses on Monday.
Sorry no pictures coz my laptop does not take memory cards
Bad day today from start to finish :muddled:
I left home at 07.15 to be at a meeting at 10.00. The meeting is about half an hour from my home but traffic being what it is at 09.00, I would rather leave early and sit reading the paper. I managed to have my meeting at 09.20 and was finished by 10.00 so headed home as a couple of assistants were coming to help fit the roof trusses.
Half way through lifting the trusses into position I had a call from Deborah Services (the bum company I hired the scaffold from, remember them) to say 6 pieces were missing. ‘No they were not I said go and check again’. After triple checking they called back to say they had found them....WTF was that about.....
Next I received a call to say that my computer was not booting up in the shop, the good news was they could get to the hard drive and save everything on it, the bad news was they would have to reformat it.
Next the doorbell went and it was Environmental Services, they had a call complaining about the noise.......'Well I'm building a garage, what do you expect' After telling me what I can and cannot do she left and I went back to the trusses. It seems I can work Monday to Friday 08.00am to 19.00 pm and Saturday 08.00am to 13.00pm. Should I require to be making a noise on a Sunday it must be done in the afternoon……Suites me fine 08.00am Saturday morning.
We lifted the last truss into position and temporarily nailed it up and went to secure the next truss when everything gave way and the trusses folded like a pack of cards, taking part of the gable end down with it.
This left us rather terrified and we were not looking forward to starting again. The rain got heavier and we just had to keep going as everything was in a mess. We finished tonight with half the trusses up and braced, no work tomorrow as I have a job on and hopefully we get back to it on Thursday. I only hope the wind stays calm until we get the roof secured.
End of a tough week, and the garage has been a major problem. Because I am not allowed to work after 7.00pm week days, 1.00pm Saturday, not at all Sundays and what with the wet weather it has been slow progress.
Tuesday when the trusses collapsed I had to do something temporary and quickly to ensure they never got damaged. I pinned half in place with temporary bracing and hoped for the best that they would stay up until I had a chance to fix them properly. Not my cleverest idea as I have worried about it since. Thankfully everything stayed put and today I had the chance to set the trusses level and nail some permanent diagonals and latitudes on, all before my 1.00pm deadline.
The one thing that I couldn't get round my head is that the trusses are not fixed to the gable end :muddled:
Once the diagonals and latitudes are in place that is what holds it all together... I'm not looking forward to Monday as I should be at the stage of removing my clamps and all temporary bracing, fingers crossed. :duh:
Now that I have a 1.00pm curfew for construction work it means I can do a bit of gardening........with a Stihl petrol hedge trimmer....boy is it noisy....but it's not construction, it's gardening, which everyone does at weekends.....
New scaffold tower makes everything so much safer but it is still hard work. Sadly I never managed to get it finished today and as I am not allowed to hammer in nails (construction work) (I would hate to upset my neighbours) on a Sunday I will just need to finish trimming my privet
New scaffold tower and Stihl hedge trimmer
There is another 2 metre section for the tower but it is not required for the hedge...Yet
My handywork, this is the almost finished side with most of the bracing complete
This is the damaged gable end, It's not as bad as it looks
Finally this is the rain running down the road last week
Glad this week is over
