I made a post about a month ago about i got my Thames ( http://www.rv.net/forum/index.cfm/fuseaction/thread/tid/24150005.cfm ). Since then ive made a start stripping it out and assessing all the******i have to do to get it back to life.
I figured out how the 'dining table' was set up
and how the seats fold out into 'beds'
This is the first weekend we went to the garage and the magic started.
My girlfriend has taken an unusual interest in helping me to restore the van. I think its great as if i was in the garage myself it could get a bit boring but its a good laugh having her around and helping me out. Its ok right now at the stripping down stage but i think she may get bored when I'm welding and cutting **** up. I was thinking i could buy her a sewing machine and she could re-upholster the seats and curtains etc..
Yeah, check out those comfy ugly slacks I'm rocking.
I got Jana started on removing the light lenses and units etc.. she even managed to get the rear bumpers off herself. I don't mean to sound patronizing but when someone calls a ratchet the "clicky-thing" its quite a big step for her.
I even bought her a special tool kit for the job, shes since bought herself a proper tool bag and pliers set.
First door removed. It was a ***** as the hinge bolts were rusted solid, lucky for me there is a huge tool store opposite the garage (machine mart) so i managed to get an impact screwdriver.
All the seats and interior came out easy, the gas cooker was a bit of a joke really, The cage that held the gas bottle underneath the floor was about 8 inches from the ground and about an inch from the propshaft, then the gas pipe went to the cooker where someone had used a T-piece for some reason, with one pipe going to the hob and the other pipe was bent round a few times to stop gas leaking.... i don't know why the never just used a single pipe. There was a lot of cork insulation which i think had been stuck on with tar. Oh what fun i had with a scraper. Jana 'helped', but well, she got bored of it a lot quicker than i did.
Handsome eh,
Then i got stuck into the wiring loom, there was a lot of house-hold wire in one colour for switches and lights all over the place. I know I'm going to be re-doing the interior lighting differently so those got binned and i kept the standard loom. Note the intensity of my concentration.
The next weekend we started on taking the pop-up roof off. The fabric of the roof its self isn't too bad. There is a rip in it but its along the seam so once stitched up it will be ok. It was held down with aluminium strips and brackets.
WEST SIDE Y'ALL
peek-a-boo
Starting to get quite bare now, in total we found 3 dead birds in the van, 2 of which were skeletons and the other was quite fresh looking underneath the radiator intake, perhaps from the drive home on the trailer, oops.
We got the other door off and then i set about the lower panels, there pretty easy to come off as there all bolt on panels, something Ford promoted as a key selling point apparently.
The right lower panel its self was not bad, just a bit of surface rust and a few dings. Even behind the panel it was not bad. You can see the battery tray is pretty much gone but thats not really a problem at all, its just a welded up box. Although a lot of rust came flaking off as you can see.
The back of the wheel well is the worst, good thing is a lot of the panels to replace are just flat sheet with bends in it.
The other side was a bit harder to take off as it had spot welds along the side door opening but it came off none the less.
During all this a few bolts were completely seized and i had to grind them off, sending sparks flying. I finally thought id be a lot safer doing all this **** with the petrol tank out. Only problem was the bolts underneath had seized and the only access was to rip the floor out and take them off from the top.
So out the floor it went. The guy that rents the other side of the garage popped down and gave me a hand. The floor was inch thick plywood and all the coachscrews holding it down were, as you could guess, seized. We came up with a plan of him using a big lever and me drilling lots of holes around the coachscrews. You can see the petrol tank is quite small for something to go travelling with, may need to find something bigger. Once i disconnected the tank i poured the petrol away and it was pure orange, like irn-bru. Must have been laying in the tank for years.
The weekend after my brother came along instead of Jana as i wanted to get the engine/gearbox and the rest of the glass out. We even managed to get the rest of the doors off.
Glass out
Checking out how to remove the engine. We disconnected the gearbox first and tied rope around the engine to lift it straight up.
My garage buddys engine crane came in handy.
CHEEESE!!
A full 53bhp or so of pure antique metal
This is the hole that has been left from taking the motor out, The plan is to replace it with a 3 litre Cologne/Essex V6, i know it fits as ive seen the set up before in a Thames van. I'm going to go for an automatic box too as i just want it as a cruiser and i hope to keep the column change and rig it up to the autobox.
Thats as far as ive gotten with the van. I'm pretty much at the stage where i need to take the suspension, steering and rear axle off but before i do that i need to make up a way of supporting the van off the ground. I was looking at building a rotisserie but i came up with a slightly different idea. I'm going to build 2 huge dodecagons that split into 2 pieces. That way i can roll it on its side and sandblast/repair underneath then roll it back, unbolt the top half of the dodecagons and work on the roof etc..
Only thing is its going to cost about ยฃ180 in material so i need to do a few homers to make up the money for that. I also just put down a deposit to rent a new house with Jana so money is quite tight. Next update will probably be in a few more weeks.
I figured out how the 'dining table' was set up
and how the seats fold out into 'beds'
This is the first weekend we went to the garage and the magic started.
My girlfriend has taken an unusual interest in helping me to restore the van. I think its great as if i was in the garage myself it could get a bit boring but its a good laugh having her around and helping me out. Its ok right now at the stripping down stage but i think she may get bored when I'm welding and cutting **** up. I was thinking i could buy her a sewing machine and she could re-upholster the seats and curtains etc..
Yeah, check out those comfy ugly slacks I'm rocking.
I got Jana started on removing the light lenses and units etc.. she even managed to get the rear bumpers off herself. I don't mean to sound patronizing but when someone calls a ratchet the "clicky-thing" its quite a big step for her.
I even bought her a special tool kit for the job, shes since bought herself a proper tool bag and pliers set.
First door removed. It was a ***** as the hinge bolts were rusted solid, lucky for me there is a huge tool store opposite the garage (machine mart) so i managed to get an impact screwdriver.
All the seats and interior came out easy, the gas cooker was a bit of a joke really, The cage that held the gas bottle underneath the floor was about 8 inches from the ground and about an inch from the propshaft, then the gas pipe went to the cooker where someone had used a T-piece for some reason, with one pipe going to the hob and the other pipe was bent round a few times to stop gas leaking.... i don't know why the never just used a single pipe. There was a lot of cork insulation which i think had been stuck on with tar. Oh what fun i had with a scraper. Jana 'helped', but well, she got bored of it a lot quicker than i did.
Handsome eh,
Then i got stuck into the wiring loom, there was a lot of house-hold wire in one colour for switches and lights all over the place. I know I'm going to be re-doing the interior lighting differently so those got binned and i kept the standard loom. Note the intensity of my concentration.
The next weekend we started on taking the pop-up roof off. The fabric of the roof its self isn't too bad. There is a rip in it but its along the seam so once stitched up it will be ok. It was held down with aluminium strips and brackets.
WEST SIDE Y'ALL
peek-a-boo
Starting to get quite bare now, in total we found 3 dead birds in the van, 2 of which were skeletons and the other was quite fresh looking underneath the radiator intake, perhaps from the drive home on the trailer, oops.
We got the other door off and then i set about the lower panels, there pretty easy to come off as there all bolt on panels, something Ford promoted as a key selling point apparently.
The right lower panel its self was not bad, just a bit of surface rust and a few dings. Even behind the panel it was not bad. You can see the battery tray is pretty much gone but thats not really a problem at all, its just a welded up box. Although a lot of rust came flaking off as you can see.
The back of the wheel well is the worst, good thing is a lot of the panels to replace are just flat sheet with bends in it.
The other side was a bit harder to take off as it had spot welds along the side door opening but it came off none the less.
During all this a few bolts were completely seized and i had to grind them off, sending sparks flying. I finally thought id be a lot safer doing all this **** with the petrol tank out. Only problem was the bolts underneath had seized and the only access was to rip the floor out and take them off from the top.
So out the floor it went. The guy that rents the other side of the garage popped down and gave me a hand. The floor was inch thick plywood and all the coachscrews holding it down were, as you could guess, seized. We came up with a plan of him using a big lever and me drilling lots of holes around the coachscrews. You can see the petrol tank is quite small for something to go travelling with, may need to find something bigger. Once i disconnected the tank i poured the petrol away and it was pure orange, like irn-bru. Must have been laying in the tank for years.
The weekend after my brother came along instead of Jana as i wanted to get the engine/gearbox and the rest of the glass out. We even managed to get the rest of the doors off.
Glass out
Checking out how to remove the engine. We disconnected the gearbox first and tied rope around the engine to lift it straight up.
My garage buddys engine crane came in handy.
CHEEESE!!
A full 53bhp or so of pure antique metal
This is the hole that has been left from taking the motor out, The plan is to replace it with a 3 litre Cologne/Essex V6, i know it fits as ive seen the set up before in a Thames van. I'm going to go for an automatic box too as i just want it as a cruiser and i hope to keep the column change and rig it up to the autobox.
Thats as far as ive gotten with the van. I'm pretty much at the stage where i need to take the suspension, steering and rear axle off but before i do that i need to make up a way of supporting the van off the ground. I was looking at building a rotisserie but i came up with a slightly different idea. I'm going to build 2 huge dodecagons that split into 2 pieces. That way i can roll it on its side and sandblast/repair underneath then roll it back, unbolt the top half of the dodecagons and work on the roof etc..
Only thing is its going to cost about ยฃ180 in material so i need to do a few homers to make up the money for that. I also just put down a deposit to rent a new house with Jana so money is quite tight. Next update will probably be in a few more weeks.
Thanks guy ๐ .
August 2015
Time for another belated update on the garage/life. Lets see, the last update was May so this is 3 months worth of stuff that's been going on.
Ok, I got the rest of the trusses up without much hassle, that was the good thing about making them up on a jig., just repeat everything.
When it came to the other end of the garage I did have a little problem joining the panels together as I only had 2 "corner" pieces that I had already used on the front of the garage. The panels are about 75-80mm thick so I bought a length of 80mm box section and used that as the corner posts. I drilled and tapped the holes to bolt the panels too them and also welded on base plates to help strengthening it up a bit.
I then started on the purlins. To save even more money, I made use of what I already had and reused the 50x150 I had used for boxing in the foundations. I attached these using Tek-screws, wonderful things! Just like screws with inbuilt drill bits on the end so no need for pilot holes, just screw them in with a cordless like you normally would putting screws into wood.
Put them in over a few days, then stood up on the highest point for the first time.
Then it was time for the actual roof. I bought some 18mm OSB3 board as my first layer. I managed to rope both brothers to help me out with this as I wanted everything to be water tight in one day in case it rained (this being Scotland and all)
Ross turned up first, raring to go.
Starting to sheet it up. I borrowed the works rip-saw for the weekend which was very useful.
Then the centre section. It was feeling pretty surreal actually walking on the roof, atleast it made me feel more confident about the strength of the whole thing.
First layer done, ready for the vapour barrier, and pose.
Vapour barrier all taped up.
This was when Scott turned up and we reunited as team Barlas!, nothing could stop us now.
Attaching the 50mm insulation panels. We worked out a way of doing the roof. The insulation panels were 1200mm wide and the roof panels were 1000mm so once we had one sheet of insulation down and pinned we then placed a roof section on top and put a few more tekscrews in to keep it down. I had decent length screws to get into the purlin underneath also. I also put sticky rubber between the roof section joints to help make it even more weather tight. Oh, I also used proper foil tape between all the insulation sections to make another barrier.
Bit too much posing and coffee breaks for my liking ๐ .
Scott's pretty tall so it was handy having him at the ready to pass the panels up, after a while we started getting a good system going.
One panel to go.
To tidy up the apex and edges I cut a few lengths of 1.6mm galvanised sheets from work into strips then took them along to my old work and folded them over. I still had a few things to do at either end so I just put the centre up first and folded the vapour barrier over so the OSB and insulation wouldn't get wet in the mean time.
Cut to a few weeks later. I neatend up the eaves of the garage with a metal cicular saw and a straight line. I had also installed the guttering but hadn't plumbed everything in yet. Oh, and you cant really see it here but I have the foam eave fillers in too. I couldn't find the right profile anywhere so I went to a local foam centre and was quoted ยฃ85 just for foam, no special shapes or anything, just a continuous section of foam!. So, being the cheap ass that I am I went around a few of the bargain shops and found a place that had foam knee pads that were made from 50x50 sections of foam, best thing was they were only 50p each and each knee pad had 10 sections. All I did was separate them , angle the ends and they fitted, so I saved ยฃ80.50.
To seal the end trusses of the garage I used more OSB3 I had left over, cut the triangles out, painted them in extra thick bitumen paint to seal them from water and installed them using a mixture of screws and tek-screws. I also fitted the flashings by this point.
I had then hoped to get straight onto the doors but shortly after fitting the gutters we had a huge downpour. Now, I was probably very naive thinking that I could use 2 x 25 gallon buckets and that I would empty them "everynow and then" because it had been raining for about an hour and each bucket was over flowing!
Well, that means I better plumb in the roof water drainage.
Got the pick-axe ( my dads one really, I cant seem to find mine, the running joke is its buried in the foundations somewhere ๐ ) and shovel and started to dig. I had forgotten just how much of a work out it was.
Good thing is I have a vent in my garden just outside the back door so I was able to tap into that using a clay to PVC adaptor.
P-trap concreted in.
As I could only really do stuff after work this was my temporary solution so I don't flood my garden, flood the council grass instead.
I bought some drain channels on Ebay and set about laying them. I bought a few bags of cement and 24 bags of ballast to mix up. I really wish I had a mixer but I dint so all of it was done by hand, all half ton of it, my guns were aching by the time it was all done.
Whilst I had a trench dug I thought id lay the power cable too. My dad gave me an old bit of 5mm thick wall piping so I ran a 10mm twin and earth cable though it which should be more than ample for what I need.
Great, that was the drainage done, now back to the doors. As usual, I didn't want any flimsy nancy pansy wooden door, I wanted steel! So I took some measurements and drew up some plans.
I wanted all the height I could get so I designed the doors to go right up including the anlged section.
I took a weeks holiday from work......so I could then go to my work and make the doors.... I used 50mm box section for the frame.
I used 1.6mm galvanised to sheet it out and made my own heavy duty hinges.
After a weeks work my dad came round and helped me fit them. I was a bit anxious as I only left a 10mm gap all around but they fitted like the proverbial glove.
Inside
Then I used some 25mm angle and rubber beading to make a weather tight seal.
Ive since fitted more sliding bolts. The beauty of it is there's no way to open it from the outside right now (that wont be until much later when I'm using the van) Even if someone cuts the hinges there's a back up system ๐ .
Now for the entry door, again it had to be metal but I didn't want it to look like an industrial unit so I made a faux 4 panel door. Framed and sheated then I cut up some wooden (bleugh) beading for decoration. I also have 2 nice anti-saw locks attached
I managed to fit this door myself. I had 3 hinges on it to start off with but as the door has a slight bow in it the middle hinge was binding with the door frame so that whenever I opened the door it made the frame twist slightly. That caused the sealant to flex so I had to cut the middle one off, never mind. Il deal with the hole later.
You may have also noticed in the last photo I have fitted my strip lights. I only have them wired to a plug just now so I can have light if I need to work inside when its dark until I get all the electrics connected up. My boss was throwing them out as he bought new ones for the showroom. Little bit paint and they were fit for purpose. They are a tad long though so I have had to stagger them , beggers cant be choosers and all that eh.
Getting close to where I am right now. I've started doing the bit I've kind of been worried about. Rendering the upper part of the trusses and wall to match the rest of the garage panels. I've looked up a lot of information regarding how to do it and so I went and bought all the materials. To render onto wood it needs to have a mesh put on first, this is called lath. It needs to be as tight as possible so I attached it with about 120 screws and washers over the looser areas.
Then my scratch coat. I used a 4:1 mix of sand and cement with some waterproofer/plasticiser mixed in and bought myself a good trowel. It was a bit daunting but I was getting the hang of it. I'm definitely not a plasterer though.
Then I bought some galvanised beading to put around the windows so it looks neater then I gave the wall a scratch coat.
To level everything out I gave the upper section another scratch coat as it was 10mm further back than the wall. Then that brings me nicely to today. I bought some small stone chips from a garden centre and started the roughcast coat. Now that is tricky! I messed up the first time as I had not made the wall wet enough before rendering so by the time I finished a section all the moisture had seeped into the wall and the outside was dry so the stones never stuck in. I s****ed it all off and started again, this time I really wet the walls then got on with it. I was a bit more successful this time but I can honestly see why this is a proper time served apprenticeship kind of job. The professionals make it look so easy too.
The good thing is its all getting painted when I'm finished anyway, I think il use a textured masonry paint to blend it all in. I have already gotten the slate grey for the roof , just waiting for a few sunny days to do it.
That's me completely upto date now. Once I have finished this wall I will move onto the back of the garage and do that end in the same way with the roughcasting. After that its just a few other little things to tidy up/finish then paint and the exterior will be done and I can move onto the inside to insulate and sheet. I think my boss wants me out pretty soon though so I think I will have to move a lot of stuff along to the garage and work around the van. Will be a bugger but will be pretty cool to have the van home as well ๐ .
Until next time!
August 2015
Time for another belated update on the garage/life. Lets see, the last update was May so this is 3 months worth of stuff that's been going on.
Ok, I got the rest of the trusses up without much hassle, that was the good thing about making them up on a jig., just repeat everything.
When it came to the other end of the garage I did have a little problem joining the panels together as I only had 2 "corner" pieces that I had already used on the front of the garage. The panels are about 75-80mm thick so I bought a length of 80mm box section and used that as the corner posts. I drilled and tapped the holes to bolt the panels too them and also welded on base plates to help strengthening it up a bit.
I then started on the purlins. To save even more money, I made use of what I already had and reused the 50x150 I had used for boxing in the foundations. I attached these using Tek-screws, wonderful things! Just like screws with inbuilt drill bits on the end so no need for pilot holes, just screw them in with a cordless like you normally would putting screws into wood.
Put them in over a few days, then stood up on the highest point for the first time.
Then it was time for the actual roof. I bought some 18mm OSB3 board as my first layer. I managed to rope both brothers to help me out with this as I wanted everything to be water tight in one day in case it rained (this being Scotland and all)
Ross turned up first, raring to go.
Starting to sheet it up. I borrowed the works rip-saw for the weekend which was very useful.
Then the centre section. It was feeling pretty surreal actually walking on the roof, atleast it made me feel more confident about the strength of the whole thing.
First layer done, ready for the vapour barrier, and pose.
Vapour barrier all taped up.
This was when Scott turned up and we reunited as team Barlas!, nothing could stop us now.
Attaching the 50mm insulation panels. We worked out a way of doing the roof. The insulation panels were 1200mm wide and the roof panels were 1000mm so once we had one sheet of insulation down and pinned we then placed a roof section on top and put a few more tekscrews in to keep it down. I had decent length screws to get into the purlin underneath also. I also put sticky rubber between the roof section joints to help make it even more weather tight. Oh, I also used proper foil tape between all the insulation sections to make another barrier.
Bit too much posing and coffee breaks for my liking ๐ .
Scott's pretty tall so it was handy having him at the ready to pass the panels up, after a while we started getting a good system going.
One panel to go.
To tidy up the apex and edges I cut a few lengths of 1.6mm galvanised sheets from work into strips then took them along to my old work and folded them over. I still had a few things to do at either end so I just put the centre up first and folded the vapour barrier over so the OSB and insulation wouldn't get wet in the mean time.
Cut to a few weeks later. I neatend up the eaves of the garage with a metal cicular saw and a straight line. I had also installed the guttering but hadn't plumbed everything in yet. Oh, and you cant really see it here but I have the foam eave fillers in too. I couldn't find the right profile anywhere so I went to a local foam centre and was quoted ยฃ85 just for foam, no special shapes or anything, just a continuous section of foam!. So, being the cheap ass that I am I went around a few of the bargain shops and found a place that had foam knee pads that were made from 50x50 sections of foam, best thing was they were only 50p each and each knee pad had 10 sections. All I did was separate them , angle the ends and they fitted, so I saved ยฃ80.50.
To seal the end trusses of the garage I used more OSB3 I had left over, cut the triangles out, painted them in extra thick bitumen paint to seal them from water and installed them using a mixture of screws and tek-screws. I also fitted the flashings by this point.
I had then hoped to get straight onto the doors but shortly after fitting the gutters we had a huge downpour. Now, I was probably very naive thinking that I could use 2 x 25 gallon buckets and that I would empty them "everynow and then" because it had been raining for about an hour and each bucket was over flowing!
Well, that means I better plumb in the roof water drainage.
Got the pick-axe ( my dads one really, I cant seem to find mine, the running joke is its buried in the foundations somewhere ๐ ) and shovel and started to dig. I had forgotten just how much of a work out it was.
Good thing is I have a vent in my garden just outside the back door so I was able to tap into that using a clay to PVC adaptor.
P-trap concreted in.
As I could only really do stuff after work this was my temporary solution so I don't flood my garden, flood the council grass instead.
I bought some drain channels on Ebay and set about laying them. I bought a few bags of cement and 24 bags of ballast to mix up. I really wish I had a mixer but I dint so all of it was done by hand, all half ton of it, my guns were aching by the time it was all done.
Whilst I had a trench dug I thought id lay the power cable too. My dad gave me an old bit of 5mm thick wall piping so I ran a 10mm twin and earth cable though it which should be more than ample for what I need.
Great, that was the drainage done, now back to the doors. As usual, I didn't want any flimsy nancy pansy wooden door, I wanted steel! So I took some measurements and drew up some plans.
I wanted all the height I could get so I designed the doors to go right up including the anlged section.
I took a weeks holiday from work......so I could then go to my work and make the doors.... I used 50mm box section for the frame.
I used 1.6mm galvanised to sheet it out and made my own heavy duty hinges.
After a weeks work my dad came round and helped me fit them. I was a bit anxious as I only left a 10mm gap all around but they fitted like the proverbial glove.
Inside
Then I used some 25mm angle and rubber beading to make a weather tight seal.
Ive since fitted more sliding bolts. The beauty of it is there's no way to open it from the outside right now (that wont be until much later when I'm using the van) Even if someone cuts the hinges there's a back up system ๐ .
Now for the entry door, again it had to be metal but I didn't want it to look like an industrial unit so I made a faux 4 panel door. Framed and sheated then I cut up some wooden (bleugh) beading for decoration. I also have 2 nice anti-saw locks attached
I managed to fit this door myself. I had 3 hinges on it to start off with but as the door has a slight bow in it the middle hinge was binding with the door frame so that whenever I opened the door it made the frame twist slightly. That caused the sealant to flex so I had to cut the middle one off, never mind. Il deal with the hole later.
You may have also noticed in the last photo I have fitted my strip lights. I only have them wired to a plug just now so I can have light if I need to work inside when its dark until I get all the electrics connected up. My boss was throwing them out as he bought new ones for the showroom. Little bit paint and they were fit for purpose. They are a tad long though so I have had to stagger them , beggers cant be choosers and all that eh.
Getting close to where I am right now. I've started doing the bit I've kind of been worried about. Rendering the upper part of the trusses and wall to match the rest of the garage panels. I've looked up a lot of information regarding how to do it and so I went and bought all the materials. To render onto wood it needs to have a mesh put on first, this is called lath. It needs to be as tight as possible so I attached it with about 120 screws and washers over the looser areas.
Then my scratch coat. I used a 4:1 mix of sand and cement with some waterproofer/plasticiser mixed in and bought myself a good trowel. It was a bit daunting but I was getting the hang of it. I'm definitely not a plasterer though.
Then I bought some galvanised beading to put around the windows so it looks neater then I gave the wall a scratch coat.
To level everything out I gave the upper section another scratch coat as it was 10mm further back than the wall. Then that brings me nicely to today. I bought some small stone chips from a garden centre and started the roughcast coat. Now that is tricky! I messed up the first time as I had not made the wall wet enough before rendering so by the time I finished a section all the moisture had seeped into the wall and the outside was dry so the stones never stuck in. I s****ed it all off and started again, this time I really wet the walls then got on with it. I was a bit more successful this time but I can honestly see why this is a proper time served apprenticeship kind of job. The professionals make it look so easy too.
The good thing is its all getting painted when I'm finished anyway, I think il use a textured masonry paint to blend it all in. I have already gotten the slate grey for the roof , just waiting for a few sunny days to do it.
That's me completely upto date now. Once I have finished this wall I will move onto the back of the garage and do that end in the same way with the roughcasting. After that its just a few other little things to tidy up/finish then paint and the exterior will be done and I can move onto the inside to insulate and sheet. I think my boss wants me out pretty soon though so I think I will have to move a lot of stuff along to the garage and work around the van. Will be a bugger but will be pretty cool to have the van home as well ๐ .
Until next time!
May 2015,
Wow, its been a pretty long time since I had any updates. As I mentioned the last time I've been building a garage as my boss wants his garage back. The good thing is he hasn't really been in too much of a rush to get me out. As with the van I've only been able to do the garage on the weekends and some nights after work if im not too busy, too tired, crappy weather, planets all a lined, blue moons etc... Its actually taken quite a bit longer than I hoped but I am getting there. I'm also too cheap to pay someone else to do things for me.
So, to recap from my last post il add what I wrote before.
So my new project that I'm going to have to rush though is a double garage. Scotland's rules regarding a garage without having to get planning permission are actually quite relaxed. Here are those rules.
(1) The provision within the curtilage of a dwellinghouse of a building for any purpose incidental to the enjoyment of that dwellinghouse or the alteration, maintenance or improvement of such a building.
(2) Development is not permitted by this class if-
(a) it consists of a dwelling;
(b) any part of the development would be forward of a wall forming part of the principal elevation or side elevation where that elevation fronts a road;
(c) the height of the eaves would exceed 3 metres;
(d) any part of the development would exceed 4 metres in height;
(e) any part of the development within 1 metre of the boundary of the curtilage of the dwellinghouse would exceed 2.5 metres in height;
(f) as a result of the development the area of ground covered by development within the front or rear curtilage of the dwellinghouse (excluding the original dwellinghouse and any hard surface or deck) would exceed 50% of the area of the front or rear curtilage respectively (excluding the ground area of the original dwellinghouse and any hard surface or deck); or
(g) in the case of land in a conservation area or within the curtilage of a listed building, the resulting building would have a footprint exceeding 4 square metres.
The only part of that which has been my biggest challenge is the 2.5 metres max within 1 metre of the boundary, due to my garden being about 6 metres wide and the garage being 5 metres wide. Ive spent a lot of time drawing and measuring so I don't need written permission (I,e a huge amount of money and time).
This is the garden when I moved in.
Since then I've had to lift all the stone chips and mark out my dimensions for the monolithic slab I will be pouring in. Underneath the blue tarp I have about 40 concrete sectional panels I got for a steal second-hand.
The outer edges of the slab will be 300 x 300 then the centre will be 150mm thick, of course I will also have rebar and mesh in there too. Gives me a good indication size, really happy to actually start my dream of my very own double garage :).
Which brings me to today. The trenches are dug and I'm now skimming the top layer for the centre of the slab. A few people have already asked me why I'm not just hiring a digger and skip to do it all but to be honest I'm absolutely skint. I managed to get a small loan for the material but if I can save myself money by digging and disposing of the clay/soil in a trailer at the local tip I will. (even if that means roping in my poor brother to lend a hand, cheers bro)
I'm hoping next week will be the last weekend of digging. And I can get the rebar in and concrete poured maybe around mid February, we'll see........
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ok, so I did manage to skim the top layer off but I stumbled across a bit of bad luck. The weather took a really bad change for the worse and it chucked down with rain for a solid week a few days after all the digging. The ground was complete mush, really sticky clay and it was soaked all the way through. I had hoped that it wouldn't rain as the clay was quite firm and I hoped to just pour directly over that. In a very vain attempt to do something I even covered it with tarp to see if a couple of weeks would help to dry out at least the centre.
But it was no use. Once I took the tarp off it was just as bad. I felt really quite upset and a bit stressed out at this so I looked up what to do on google. So to remedy the situation I ordered 3 tons of hardcore to be delivered. To make space for all the hardcore though I had to go down another 150mm which my dad kindly helped me wit, thanks dad. Then I think it was the next day the hardcore was delivered. I had learnt my lesson not to have too much time between vital jobs.
My dad came back along that day and helped me to spread it out and I hired a whacker plate from the local hire shop and after a few hours I had a really good strong, firm base to pour on. I bought a few lengths of 6x2 to use as shuttering with some 2x2 stakes and took my time laying it all out.
Once I was happy with the shuttering I ordered the concrete and took a long weekend off so I could prepare the damp proof membrane and rebar to go down the day before it arrived so I wouldn't get puddles if it rained. I bought the rebar a little while before so for speed I had already welded these into long cube shapes so all I had to do was place it in, no need for tying them together with wire. The rebar is 16mm thick with 8mm mesh, its probably a bit more heavy duty than it needed to be but for the sake of ยฃ30 - ยฃ40 I thought id do it strong.
Then the DMP went down. I also ran a small length of water pipe so I can run an electric cable through it when I'm finished. Also, to save a bit cash on mesh supports I just broke a few slabs into small bits which raised it to about 60 mm, the thickness of the foundation in the centre is around 120-140mm
All ready !
I had ordered a mix of C25 concrete from a company that done a pretty good price. My brother and Dad came over to help out with the spreading. None of us had ever done this kind of thing so we may have made a few mistakes but the end product is pretty good. I had looked up a few videos on yotube about concrete pouring but I couldn't find one that covered pretty much all of the pour without being either sped up too fast or just a lot of editing to make the video short. I decided to record a full hours worth of video and I put it on youtube if anyone else is interested in the process. Here's the link to that video if anyone's interested.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTWCKyfLWgk
It was pretty hard going, shovelling, raking, scooping really took its toll on us. Trying to do all of these things as quick as we could and keeping a level head to know what to do next was difficult, but we managed to get all the concrete poured in in about 45-50 mins so I didn't have to pay any extra to the driver and once he left I just had the skimming to do. I hired a long float from the same place as the whacker plate to get a more professional looking finish. At the end of the day I was left with a very expensive piece of concrete but I was really happy as it meant no more muddy shoes and clothes ! ๐ .
The next few days I was pretty apprehensive, checking on it all the time to make sure there was no cracks forming and that it was setting well. After a couple of weeks I too all the shuttering off and it was still intact, phew!
I had a few other things going on at the time so I left it another couple of weeks. I then ordered 60 concrete blocks to be delivered. The garage panels I bought second hand are only 2 metres tall, so to get a bit of extra height I wanted to build a small one row of blocks around to put the panels on top of. This is also the first time I've done any mortar/block work. My big book of DIY came in handy again for this.
The only real bother about this is the fact I don't know 100% to the millimetre where the panels will end so I decided to build the front half of the garage first, then when I work back I can put the last few blocks in place when I know where the last panel will land.
Once the blocks I needed were in place my brother came along and helped me put up the first corner. I managed to get 2 double glazed windows for free from my work so for that area I built a small wall up with blocks.
Then when I was happy with the little wall I welded up a door frame.
Few more panels put up. The panels join to each other with 4 M8 bolts. I managed to tap into the door frame so there attached to that also.
I had also been making up my roof trusses after work during this time too. They are scissor trusses made from 50x3 angle and 50x50 box. When designing them I wanted all the joints to be extra strong so they overlap in some areas and braced in others. My boss was nice enough to let me use the workshop for this.
The beauty of them is I needed 14 halfs to make 7 whole ones but 11 of them are identical so I only needed to make one jig.
My dad and brother came back along to help me set the first end truss up plus put a few more panels up. Then when they left I put the windows in.
Which brings me upto how it is today. Both my brothers were here yesterday and helped me get 2 of the trusses up into position and a few more panels up.
To attach the trusses I bolted down a length of 50x5 angle to the top of the panels. Worked out the centres for them, then cut out a 55mm wide slot to drop them in place. Once I was happy with there position I welded them down.
I wish I never took so long to do this update as I've forgotten half the details I was going to put in. I did actually think id have it done by now but so much is going on I'm strapped for time. I got a promotion at work so I'm now th eworkshop foreman which has been pretty good plus it means a little more per hour, yippee.
Now I need to go outside and mortar the last of the bricks as I know where they are going to be so I can get the rest of the panels up and secured.
I have also managed to buy insulation for the roof, 50mm thick foil backed foam as I'm making it a warm roof. I got them from gumtree from someone that bought some for his conservatory then changed his mind so there still brand new. I also managed to get some second hand box profile roof sheets, 0.7mm thick. That was a bargain! ยฃ80 for the whole roof. They had been in a firedamaged building. They still have all there integrity, just a little bit of soot on the underside.
My biggest concern are the actual garage panels themselves. 80% of them are fine but the rest do have some fine cracks in them, I'm not really sure exactly what il do with them. I thought about some kind of crack injection repair but il have to look into that. In hindsight, I think I should have just built the whole thing out of concrete blocks. Too late for now, il need to see how it goes.
Wow, its been a pretty long time since I had any updates. As I mentioned the last time I've been building a garage as my boss wants his garage back. The good thing is he hasn't really been in too much of a rush to get me out. As with the van I've only been able to do the garage on the weekends and some nights after work if im not too busy, too tired, crappy weather, planets all a lined, blue moons etc... Its actually taken quite a bit longer than I hoped but I am getting there. I'm also too cheap to pay someone else to do things for me.
So, to recap from my last post il add what I wrote before.
So my new project that I'm going to have to rush though is a double garage. Scotland's rules regarding a garage without having to get planning permission are actually quite relaxed. Here are those rules.
(1) The provision within the curtilage of a dwellinghouse of a building for any purpose incidental to the enjoyment of that dwellinghouse or the alteration, maintenance or improvement of such a building.
(2) Development is not permitted by this class if-
(a) it consists of a dwelling;
(b) any part of the development would be forward of a wall forming part of the principal elevation or side elevation where that elevation fronts a road;
(c) the height of the eaves would exceed 3 metres;
(d) any part of the development would exceed 4 metres in height;
(e) any part of the development within 1 metre of the boundary of the curtilage of the dwellinghouse would exceed 2.5 metres in height;
(f) as a result of the development the area of ground covered by development within the front or rear curtilage of the dwellinghouse (excluding the original dwellinghouse and any hard surface or deck) would exceed 50% of the area of the front or rear curtilage respectively (excluding the ground area of the original dwellinghouse and any hard surface or deck); or
(g) in the case of land in a conservation area or within the curtilage of a listed building, the resulting building would have a footprint exceeding 4 square metres.
The only part of that which has been my biggest challenge is the 2.5 metres max within 1 metre of the boundary, due to my garden being about 6 metres wide and the garage being 5 metres wide. Ive spent a lot of time drawing and measuring so I don't need written permission (I,e a huge amount of money and time).
This is the garden when I moved in.
Since then I've had to lift all the stone chips and mark out my dimensions for the monolithic slab I will be pouring in. Underneath the blue tarp I have about 40 concrete sectional panels I got for a steal second-hand.
The outer edges of the slab will be 300 x 300 then the centre will be 150mm thick, of course I will also have rebar and mesh in there too. Gives me a good indication size, really happy to actually start my dream of my very own double garage :).
Which brings me to today. The trenches are dug and I'm now skimming the top layer for the centre of the slab. A few people have already asked me why I'm not just hiring a digger and skip to do it all but to be honest I'm absolutely skint. I managed to get a small loan for the material but if I can save myself money by digging and disposing of the clay/soil in a trailer at the local tip I will. (even if that means roping in my poor brother to lend a hand, cheers bro)
I'm hoping next week will be the last weekend of digging. And I can get the rebar in and concrete poured maybe around mid February, we'll see........
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ok, so I did manage to skim the top layer off but I stumbled across a bit of bad luck. The weather took a really bad change for the worse and it chucked down with rain for a solid week a few days after all the digging. The ground was complete mush, really sticky clay and it was soaked all the way through. I had hoped that it wouldn't rain as the clay was quite firm and I hoped to just pour directly over that. In a very vain attempt to do something I even covered it with tarp to see if a couple of weeks would help to dry out at least the centre.
But it was no use. Once I took the tarp off it was just as bad. I felt really quite upset and a bit stressed out at this so I looked up what to do on google. So to remedy the situation I ordered 3 tons of hardcore to be delivered. To make space for all the hardcore though I had to go down another 150mm which my dad kindly helped me wit, thanks dad. Then I think it was the next day the hardcore was delivered. I had learnt my lesson not to have too much time between vital jobs.
My dad came back along that day and helped me to spread it out and I hired a whacker plate from the local hire shop and after a few hours I had a really good strong, firm base to pour on. I bought a few lengths of 6x2 to use as shuttering with some 2x2 stakes and took my time laying it all out.
Once I was happy with the shuttering I ordered the concrete and took a long weekend off so I could prepare the damp proof membrane and rebar to go down the day before it arrived so I wouldn't get puddles if it rained. I bought the rebar a little while before so for speed I had already welded these into long cube shapes so all I had to do was place it in, no need for tying them together with wire. The rebar is 16mm thick with 8mm mesh, its probably a bit more heavy duty than it needed to be but for the sake of ยฃ30 - ยฃ40 I thought id do it strong.
Then the DMP went down. I also ran a small length of water pipe so I can run an electric cable through it when I'm finished. Also, to save a bit cash on mesh supports I just broke a few slabs into small bits which raised it to about 60 mm, the thickness of the foundation in the centre is around 120-140mm
All ready !
I had ordered a mix of C25 concrete from a company that done a pretty good price. My brother and Dad came over to help out with the spreading. None of us had ever done this kind of thing so we may have made a few mistakes but the end product is pretty good. I had looked up a few videos on yotube about concrete pouring but I couldn't find one that covered pretty much all of the pour without being either sped up too fast or just a lot of editing to make the video short. I decided to record a full hours worth of video and I put it on youtube if anyone else is interested in the process. Here's the link to that video if anyone's interested.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTWCKyfLWgk
It was pretty hard going, shovelling, raking, scooping really took its toll on us. Trying to do all of these things as quick as we could and keeping a level head to know what to do next was difficult, but we managed to get all the concrete poured in in about 45-50 mins so I didn't have to pay any extra to the driver and once he left I just had the skimming to do. I hired a long float from the same place as the whacker plate to get a more professional looking finish. At the end of the day I was left with a very expensive piece of concrete but I was really happy as it meant no more muddy shoes and clothes ! ๐ .
The next few days I was pretty apprehensive, checking on it all the time to make sure there was no cracks forming and that it was setting well. After a couple of weeks I too all the shuttering off and it was still intact, phew!
I had a few other things going on at the time so I left it another couple of weeks. I then ordered 60 concrete blocks to be delivered. The garage panels I bought second hand are only 2 metres tall, so to get a bit of extra height I wanted to build a small one row of blocks around to put the panels on top of. This is also the first time I've done any mortar/block work. My big book of DIY came in handy again for this.
The only real bother about this is the fact I don't know 100% to the millimetre where the panels will end so I decided to build the front half of the garage first, then when I work back I can put the last few blocks in place when I know where the last panel will land.
Once the blocks I needed were in place my brother came along and helped me put up the first corner. I managed to get 2 double glazed windows for free from my work so for that area I built a small wall up with blocks.
Then when I was happy with the little wall I welded up a door frame.
Few more panels put up. The panels join to each other with 4 M8 bolts. I managed to tap into the door frame so there attached to that also.
I had also been making up my roof trusses after work during this time too. They are scissor trusses made from 50x3 angle and 50x50 box. When designing them I wanted all the joints to be extra strong so they overlap in some areas and braced in others. My boss was nice enough to let me use the workshop for this.
The beauty of them is I needed 14 halfs to make 7 whole ones but 11 of them are identical so I only needed to make one jig.
My dad and brother came back along to help me set the first end truss up plus put a few more panels up. Then when they left I put the windows in.
Which brings me upto how it is today. Both my brothers were here yesterday and helped me get 2 of the trusses up into position and a few more panels up.
To attach the trusses I bolted down a length of 50x5 angle to the top of the panels. Worked out the centres for them, then cut out a 55mm wide slot to drop them in place. Once I was happy with there position I welded them down.
I wish I never took so long to do this update as I've forgotten half the details I was going to put in. I did actually think id have it done by now but so much is going on I'm strapped for time. I got a promotion at work so I'm now th eworkshop foreman which has been pretty good plus it means a little more per hour, yippee.
Now I need to go outside and mortar the last of the bricks as I know where they are going to be so I can get the rest of the panels up and secured.
I have also managed to buy insulation for the roof, 50mm thick foil backed foam as I'm making it a warm roof. I got them from gumtree from someone that bought some for his conservatory then changed his mind so there still brand new. I also managed to get some second hand box profile roof sheets, 0.7mm thick. That was a bargain! ยฃ80 for the whole roof. They had been in a firedamaged building. They still have all there integrity, just a little bit of soot on the underside.
My biggest concern are the actual garage panels themselves. 80% of them are fine but the rest do have some fine cracks in them, I'm not really sure exactly what il do with them. I thought about some kind of crack injection repair but il have to look into that. In hindsight, I think I should have just built the whole thing out of concrete blocks. Too late for now, il need to see how it goes.
