New (very old building) shop

[Lynn]

Finally, in October, the new floor was poured. Took a lot of prep to get it here.

Pretty darn level for being a fairly large area without being able to drive pins. I specified no pins, as they would compromise the vapor barrier. New floor is 45 wide, 25 deep.

It is very level for 20 feet, then a gentle 5 foot slope to the existing floor on the lower level. Space for the gantry crane, welders, sandblast cabinet, grinder, etc. Even have room to park a couple of cars well out of the work area. That way, if I run into a snag on one car, I can roll it over to the side, and still use the lift and flats on other projects.

Still needed to contend with that big 6 foot by 6 foot square hole in the floor with a well in it.

[Lynn]

What I had at this point was a new concreted work area that abutted the existing concrete work areal. The old area is all clear span, thanks to the massive double 18 inch LVL beam that we installed and an even larger cable supported beam set up that was done some time before WWII (the big one, as Archie Bunker would say). The first pic below shows how they replaced two (2) support posts with the cable tie system. That would be interesting to watch.

To go clear span on the entire work area would have required new construction to the point of meeting all modern building codes. I don’t believe we even had a modern building code when this was built in 1919; and I sure wasn’t willing to try to bring this structure up to modern standards. May as well bull doze it and start over.

I posted the pic of the couble 18 inch LVLs a while back, but here is a reminder.

[m22mike]

The cable beam is very cool

[Lynn]

This chapter involves getting a manhole cover installed over my well. I believed that filling in the well and concreting over it would have resulted in a disaster. Instead, we kept the well and integrated in into our drainage system. I wanted to be able to service the permanent sump pump. I can’t tell you how many hours I spent staring at the darn thing. Even today I find it creepy and cool at the same time. Measured it about 100 times. My plans were dictated by the largest manhole cover I could find. Believe it or not, there is a foundry right here in OK that does both cast iron and composite. I definitely wanted composite, so that lifting the cover would be a one man operation. I also wanted LARGE so that I wouldn’t need to engineer a tapered cone system over the existing well. The stones come almost to the surface. A cone would have dictated removing many of the stones to get it to the correct height. If I left all the stones, then I only needed to engineer a concrete ring. Much easier.

I chose this one: https://www.ejco.com/rest/product/ge...rProduct=false
Pretty sure that link will not work if you are not logged in on the site. Converted the PDF to a jpg, and included a pic of the specs.

It was kind of funny when the delivery guy brought the manhole cover and frame the my law office. I had borrowed my son's Suburban to take it home, as it was too big to go into Sherri's Lexus RX 350. The driver asked me: "Why in the world does a lawyer need a manhole cover? We have a bet going at the loading doc. I bet none of them bet I was covering up an anitque well with it INSIDE a building.

After the floor was poured we were left with my 6 x 6 frame around the well. It took a while to get all the vapor barrier pulled through after removing the wooden frame. I am pretty certain that even a 500 year flood rain would not get the water this high at this point, as we have so much perforated pipe under the concrete, I can’t see it getting overwhelmed. In addition, the permanent sump pump would be pulling out water as needed. Ground water can be really weird though, so I wanted every precaution possible. We packed gravel in and hand tamped it with my super heavy home made tamper, then taped a 6 x 6 patch on to the existing vapor barrier (with a giant round hole in the middle for the well). I then made two rings out of Masonite; one larger than the other. I also made four rings out of 5/8 rebar to go inside the Masonite forms. That was a challenge without a bender. Used a vice mounted to my 400 pound steel work bench to bend the rings. I had to mortar a few bricks and stones in place before placing the rings and rebar. I then tied all four pieces of rebar together with short pieces in about 8 places so they would be evenly spaced around the finished ring.

Here is what we ended up with. The spec sheet on the manhole cover indicated it was 5 and 1/16” high from the base of the frame to the top of the cover. Either I measured wrong, or the spec sheet was wrong. The top of the cover ended up being about an 1/8 inch above the grade of my floor. Oh well, not much taper as you will see in the finished concrete. Still very easy to drive over. I think I am safe, as it is rated to support 50,000 pounds. Not planning on driving any tanks in there.

[Lynn]

Now I had a nice clean, reinforced ring to attach the frame to. Then it was just a matter of pouring concrete.

[Lynn]

Here is the cover ring attached with tapcon screws. You can see the 5/8 rebar we placed and connected. I didn’t have chairs for the rebar, so we just held it up with rakes until a little over half of the concrete was poured.

[Lynn]

I needed almost a yard of concrete. That is about my cut off for deciding between redimix delivery and mixing it myself. But, I decided I wanted to do it on a Sunday, and no delivery available. So, off to Ace Hardware for a pallet of concrete.

I mixed 46 bags in a wheel barrow with a shovel. Only took a couple of hours. Sherri kept the bags coming off the trailer while I mixed and dumped. She also kept pulling up the rebar to get it closer to the top. It doesn't reinforce much sitting on the bottom.

Although I was done pouring after a couple of hours, this stuff took forever to set up. I was down there at 11:30 pm finishing it off.

[Lynn]

Here it is installed.

[markinnaples]

Finished product looks great, nice job.

[scuncio]

Amazing work, looks awesome.