I've been talking and thinking about doing this for 3-4 years now. Two days ago we finally took the first "ground breaking" step toward making it a reality.
The garage on my house started out as a flat-roof, open-sided carport when the the house was built 40 years ago. Some previous owner put sides on it, but no garage doors. When I bought the place 15 years ago, the flat roof was leaking badly, and the front wall where the two openings are was rotted badly enough that I had to rebuild it before having garage doors installed.
While the house foundation is sound, the garage foundation has had numerous problems from cracking and movement. I've always planned to one day tear it down to the ground and start over. My original plan was to just rebuild a two-bay garage of the same size, but with a peaked roof. Eventually, I realized that by making use of the slope, a tall RV bay could be added without ending up with a roof-line taller than the rest of the house.
Discussing the project with the DW resulted in further "scope creep", such that we'll also be adding a fair amount of square footage to the living area of the house as well. My garage/RV bay/man-cave has ballooned considerably since I first started dreaming, but this is what we've settled on. The old garage is about 28' deep, and 24' wide. The new garage will be 30' deep and 60' wide. The RV bay will have one wide door, rather than the two narrow doors shown. I was planning to allow 14' of vertical clearance, but I'm not sure I really need to go that high. Twelve feet would be plenty for my camper, the garage depth and driveway approach will never accommodate an RV much longer than mine.
About 10 years ago I had an asphalt driveway paved down behind the house, and then had a Jamar RV shed constructed over it where I'm currently parking my truck and camper. It's sitting right where my new garage RV bay will be, so it'll have to be moved. That's what we've started, which doesn't sound too difficult. Except.........
My property is on the side of a hill. There's no naturally level ground anywhere, so a pad will have to be constructed. Also, about a year ago (anticipating the loss of my garage and the storage space inside it) I constructed a 12'x20' storage building right next to the house to hold all of my man-stuff while the garage is being built. Once the garage is built, the storage building will be taken apart and moved farther away from the house. So that's two level pads to construct.
I also have a ton of trees on my property, mostly white oak, some of them pretty big, and pretty close to the house. Of course, there are trees in the way of everything I want to do.
So, Wednesday morning, bright and early, the tree cutting pro's got started. The weather was gray and gloomy that day. This is where my metal RV shed will be moved. I'm going to reduce it's height a little and use it to park other equipment under.
Getting the boom truck setup for another tree.
They were having fun maneuvering that 2WD boom truck around on my slope.
This tree was hanging over my RV shed.
My storage building. They dropped a big limb on it's roof, but it doesn't appear to have suffered any damage.
My truck and camper out of harms way in the front yard.
Wish I had one of those trucks to play with.
Pulling one down close to the power lines.
I'm saving these for another project.
I'll add more as we make progress.
:):)
The garage on my house started out as a flat-roof, open-sided carport when the the house was built 40 years ago. Some previous owner put sides on it, but no garage doors. When I bought the place 15 years ago, the flat roof was leaking badly, and the front wall where the two openings are was rotted badly enough that I had to rebuild it before having garage doors installed.
While the house foundation is sound, the garage foundation has had numerous problems from cracking and movement. I've always planned to one day tear it down to the ground and start over. My original plan was to just rebuild a two-bay garage of the same size, but with a peaked roof. Eventually, I realized that by making use of the slope, a tall RV bay could be added without ending up with a roof-line taller than the rest of the house.
Discussing the project with the DW resulted in further "scope creep", such that we'll also be adding a fair amount of square footage to the living area of the house as well. My garage/RV bay/man-cave has ballooned considerably since I first started dreaming, but this is what we've settled on. The old garage is about 28' deep, and 24' wide. The new garage will be 30' deep and 60' wide. The RV bay will have one wide door, rather than the two narrow doors shown. I was planning to allow 14' of vertical clearance, but I'm not sure I really need to go that high. Twelve feet would be plenty for my camper, the garage depth and driveway approach will never accommodate an RV much longer than mine.
About 10 years ago I had an asphalt driveway paved down behind the house, and then had a Jamar RV shed constructed over it where I'm currently parking my truck and camper. It's sitting right where my new garage RV bay will be, so it'll have to be moved. That's what we've started, which doesn't sound too difficult. Except.........
My property is on the side of a hill. There's no naturally level ground anywhere, so a pad will have to be constructed. Also, about a year ago (anticipating the loss of my garage and the storage space inside it) I constructed a 12'x20' storage building right next to the house to hold all of my man-stuff while the garage is being built. Once the garage is built, the storage building will be taken apart and moved farther away from the house. So that's two level pads to construct.
I also have a ton of trees on my property, mostly white oak, some of them pretty big, and pretty close to the house. Of course, there are trees in the way of everything I want to do.
So, Wednesday morning, bright and early, the tree cutting pro's got started. The weather was gray and gloomy that day. This is where my metal RV shed will be moved. I'm going to reduce it's height a little and use it to park other equipment under.
Getting the boom truck setup for another tree.
They were having fun maneuvering that 2WD boom truck around on my slope.
This tree was hanging over my RV shed.
My storage building. They dropped a big limb on it's roof, but it doesn't appear to have suffered any damage.
My truck and camper out of harms way in the front yard.
Wish I had one of those trucks to play with.
Pulling one down close to the power lines.
I'm saving these for another project.
I'll add more as we make progress.
:):)
bka0721 wrote:
Great thread and enjoying your contributions, without doing any of the work. I feel your pain on those concrete forms. I had a project that required those type of forms and they played that trick on me. I agreed to the conditions. After the forms were used and stacked, I blocked the trailer in with heavy equipment. I told the company I rented the forms and paid for thirty days and he could pick them up after that time. But I wanted to be fair and if he needed them, before the 30 days, he was welcome to rent them back from me. 10 days later, he came and got them and brought a check for the credit. We both laughed over it and he told me; "You got me, but don't tell anyone how you did it." So I am not telling anyone!
b
Thanks! I'll have to give that a try. :W
But if anybody asks.......
:):)
Time for another update!
We've poured a lot of concrete this past week, and I now have a massive wall that will be between the upper and lower bays, and the lower bay slab.
This is where the wall will sit. They left a bunch of #8 rebar sticking out to tie them together. The thinner rebar around the perimeter gets bent over after the vapor barrier is put down, tied to the bar from the opposite side, and then the steel mat gets laid on top of the rebar grid.
This is where my red storage shed is going to be moved after the garage is built. This was built back in February after the trees were cut.
All this excavation has been churning up tons of rock. I've been picking them up and dumping them on the sides of the raised pad. I'm just letting them lie where they stop, but I'll straighten them up later when I have time.
It's a good thing I've been doing that, too. We had some pretty hard rains this spring, and if the sides hadn't been covered with the rocks, I would have lost a lot of material downhill.
The forms for the wall show up. For some reason, the shortest you can rent these for is a month. I was not pleased.
They get started forming up the wall, and putting the rebar in it.
There's a ton of steel in this wall.
With no garage, I've been doing this a lot more lately. The trees and birds are always dropping something on them.
The wall forms are ready for concrete.
The truck shows up.........
And starts pouring the wall.
The calculated volume of the wall was 9.0 cubic yards. The form is almost full and the truck runs out. It supposedly had 9.5 yards on this 8 yard mixer. I know they can overfill these mixers, but the hills are very steep leading to my house, and I knew they couldn't have made it up them without losing some of the concrete if they had filled them with all they could hold on level ground. I've seen some nasty messes on the steep sections when it's been tried. The plant is less than a mile from my house, so we sent the driver back to get another yard or two. It took a call to the sales rep to get it straightened out, but we got the rest of our concrete without extra charges.
After curing for 24 hours, the forms come off. The outer edge of the upper bay floor slab will sit on the top of this wall.
The backside of the wall is sealed and back-filled with clean ballast with a perforated pipe at the bottom.
Getting ready to pour the lower bay floor slab. The trench is to create a two foot wide thickened section down the middle.
Discussing door placement with the builder.
At this point I had to go to work and missed the opportunity to take pictures of the vapor barrier, rebar, and steel mesh that went in the slab. I saw it though, so I know it's there. The concrete guy is doing a good job making a strong foundation. I'll try to get pictures of all that before the upper bay slab is poured.
The forms are being used here to create the footings for the upper bay slab. They have to tie in with the back-side of the wall, so there's a lot of work to do back here. We've also exposed the footings for the old garage rear wall and they're in good shape, so they are going to be reused. This should help make the transition from upper bay to lower bay stronger.
This is part of the old footings.
The forms around the lower bay slab have been removed.
That's where we stand now. I spent the day working on the asphalt road leading to my house. The concrete trucks are doing a number on it, and it's going to need some patching. I'm going to have the truck that's coming Monday bring an extra yard of concrete to fill some of the potholes. Hopefully that will hold it together until we finish the foundation.
:):)
We've poured a lot of concrete this past week, and I now have a massive wall that will be between the upper and lower bays, and the lower bay slab.
This is where the wall will sit. They left a bunch of #8 rebar sticking out to tie them together. The thinner rebar around the perimeter gets bent over after the vapor barrier is put down, tied to the bar from the opposite side, and then the steel mat gets laid on top of the rebar grid.
This is where my red storage shed is going to be moved after the garage is built. This was built back in February after the trees were cut.
All this excavation has been churning up tons of rock. I've been picking them up and dumping them on the sides of the raised pad. I'm just letting them lie where they stop, but I'll straighten them up later when I have time.
It's a good thing I've been doing that, too. We had some pretty hard rains this spring, and if the sides hadn't been covered with the rocks, I would have lost a lot of material downhill.
The forms for the wall show up. For some reason, the shortest you can rent these for is a month. I was not pleased.
They get started forming up the wall, and putting the rebar in it.
There's a ton of steel in this wall.
With no garage, I've been doing this a lot more lately. The trees and birds are always dropping something on them.
The wall forms are ready for concrete.
The truck shows up.........
And starts pouring the wall.
The calculated volume of the wall was 9.0 cubic yards. The form is almost full and the truck runs out. It supposedly had 9.5 yards on this 8 yard mixer. I know they can overfill these mixers, but the hills are very steep leading to my house, and I knew they couldn't have made it up them without losing some of the concrete if they had filled them with all they could hold on level ground. I've seen some nasty messes on the steep sections when it's been tried. The plant is less than a mile from my house, so we sent the driver back to get another yard or two. It took a call to the sales rep to get it straightened out, but we got the rest of our concrete without extra charges.
After curing for 24 hours, the forms come off. The outer edge of the upper bay floor slab will sit on the top of this wall.
The backside of the wall is sealed and back-filled with clean ballast with a perforated pipe at the bottom.
Getting ready to pour the lower bay floor slab. The trench is to create a two foot wide thickened section down the middle.
Discussing door placement with the builder.
At this point I had to go to work and missed the opportunity to take pictures of the vapor barrier, rebar, and steel mesh that went in the slab. I saw it though, so I know it's there. The concrete guy is doing a good job making a strong foundation. I'll try to get pictures of all that before the upper bay slab is poured.
The forms are being used here to create the footings for the upper bay slab. They have to tie in with the back-side of the wall, so there's a lot of work to do back here. We've also exposed the footings for the old garage rear wall and they're in good shape, so they are going to be reused. This should help make the transition from upper bay to lower bay stronger.
This is part of the old footings.
The forms around the lower bay slab have been removed.
That's where we stand now. I spent the day working on the asphalt road leading to my house. The concrete trucks are doing a number on it, and it's going to need some patching. I'm going to have the truck that's coming Monday bring an extra yard of concrete to fill some of the potholes. Hopefully that will hold it together until we finish the foundation.
:):)
Things are moving faster now, and I'd better get this updated before I get too far behind.
The foundation demo took a few days, and several loads of concrete rubble were hauled off to a landfill. Some of the concrete was surprisingly thick, considering how cracked it was. Not just hairline cracks either, wide ones with misalignment of the pieces. Just goes to show that there's more to a good concrete job than thickness.
These two are breaking up the apron slab that was in front of the garage doors. This particular piece was 12" thick over a large area!
It took both machines to lift it, and look how the track loader is up on it's toes.
When they get it up high enough, the mini-ex lets go and moves one of the smaller pieces of concrete under it.
They let go and it drops onto it, breaking off a large chunk.
It's still too heavy to lift over the side of the dump truck, and it refuses to break any more by dropping it, so they have to do it the old fashioned way: with a Bosch electric jackhammer. They had those way back when, right? By the end of the day they had whittled it down to a 4'x4' chunk that the track loader could lift. Broke one of the jackhammer bits, too.
I thought I'd play with the big boys a while. OK, my work here is done. Carry on.
I think I'm gonna need another retaining wall here. Darn hillsides!
Digging the footers, and in the process mining a bunch of boulders out of the ground. This trench is the footer that the poured concrete wall between the upper and lower bay will sit on.
The lower bay trenches completed.
First truck. These are eight yard mixers.
I think the concrete guy said that's #9 rebar in the trench.
Second truck. They all have to back down not just my driveway, but the road leading to the driveway as well. There's not enough room to maneuver around coming in frontwards.
This one first pulls onto the upper pad to dump some of its load in the trenches below.
The guy in the red shirt is one hard working son-of-a-gun. I haven't seen him take a lunch break yet.
Second truck moving to the lower area.
Pouring.....
Pouring.....
Third truck.
All full. *Burp* :B
The guys then spent a couple hours leveling and smoothing the top of the concrete. I like the work this crew is doing. They were here till about 8:30 this evening.
Tomorrow, they'll be building the form for the poured wall. Lot's of rebar got delivered today for that, and I've had some pipe sockets made to set in the top of the concrete while it's wet for a steel railing. This wall will be shaped so that it supports one side of the upper bay floor slab, and will only come up about a foot higher than the floor surface. Hence the need for the railing on top of the wall. The difference in height between the upper and lower bay floor slabs will be seven feet.
:):)
The foundation demo took a few days, and several loads of concrete rubble were hauled off to a landfill. Some of the concrete was surprisingly thick, considering how cracked it was. Not just hairline cracks either, wide ones with misalignment of the pieces. Just goes to show that there's more to a good concrete job than thickness.
These two are breaking up the apron slab that was in front of the garage doors. This particular piece was 12" thick over a large area!
It took both machines to lift it, and look how the track loader is up on it's toes.
When they get it up high enough, the mini-ex lets go and moves one of the smaller pieces of concrete under it.
They let go and it drops onto it, breaking off a large chunk.
It's still too heavy to lift over the side of the dump truck, and it refuses to break any more by dropping it, so they have to do it the old fashioned way: with a Bosch electric jackhammer. They had those way back when, right? By the end of the day they had whittled it down to a 4'x4' chunk that the track loader could lift. Broke one of the jackhammer bits, too.
I thought I'd play with the big boys a while. OK, my work here is done. Carry on.
I think I'm gonna need another retaining wall here. Darn hillsides!
Digging the footers, and in the process mining a bunch of boulders out of the ground. This trench is the footer that the poured concrete wall between the upper and lower bay will sit on.
The lower bay trenches completed.
First truck. These are eight yard mixers.
I think the concrete guy said that's #9 rebar in the trench.
Second truck. They all have to back down not just my driveway, but the road leading to the driveway as well. There's not enough room to maneuver around coming in frontwards.
This one first pulls onto the upper pad to dump some of its load in the trenches below.
The guy in the red shirt is one hard working son-of-a-gun. I haven't seen him take a lunch break yet.
Second truck moving to the lower area.
Pouring.....
Pouring.....
Third truck.
All full. *Burp* :B
The guys then spent a couple hours leveling and smoothing the top of the concrete. I like the work this crew is doing. They were here till about 8:30 this evening.
Tomorrow, they'll be building the form for the poured wall. Lot's of rebar got delivered today for that, and I've had some pipe sockets made to set in the top of the concrete while it's wet for a steel railing. This wall will be shaped so that it supports one side of the upper bay floor slab, and will only come up about a foot higher than the floor surface. Hence the need for the railing on top of the wall. The difference in height between the upper and lower bay floor slabs will be seven feet.
:):)
A mini-ex, a trackloader and a dump truck showed up today and started breaking up the foundation of the old garage. They spent the day removing the asphalt from the RV pad downhill from the garage, getting the concrete slab that used to be garage floor off, and breaking up most of the apron slab in front of the garage. Some of the old garage floor slab was as much as eight inches thick. I wouldn't have guessed that mini-ex could break up the slab, but it sure did.
We started by cutting the patio slab back away from the garage foundation. This slab will be removed later when I rebuild the deck above it, but I'm not ready to do that just yet.
The Takeuchi mini excavator and Cat track loader.
That mini-ex is a powerful little bugger.
DW says "You better get this mess cleaned up now buster!!"
One of the best things about the mess we're making with this project is that it's all outside.
:):)
We started by cutting the patio slab back away from the garage foundation. This slab will be removed later when I rebuild the deck above it, but I'm not ready to do that just yet.
The Takeuchi mini excavator and Cat track loader.
That mini-ex is a powerful little bugger.
DW says "You better get this mess cleaned up now buster!!"
One of the best things about the mess we're making with this project is that it's all outside.
:):)
