Building my shop

[David A Anderson]

Nice to see progress pics. Where are you located? (go to "My Profile", hit the "about me" tab and fill in "location", then it will show on each post)

Live outside San Antonio TX

[David A Anderson]

Interesting to see your progress. Do you live near the building?

I live two blocks away. The property has a 900 sqft home on it with a tenant. He will move out next year, and my wife and I want to sell our 2700sqft house and move in it. We want to downsize. We spend most of our time in the RV doing volunteer building with www.vcbuilders.org anyway (about 20 weeks per year). We have been doing that since 2008. The new shop is a glorified rv garage, but I have lots of tools to play with.

I've confered with the vcbuilders' president and I may use this location as a cabinet shop for fabrication for some of our jobs. He is very excited about that prospect as we have been building cabinets on the jobsite which doesn't give us the the quality that the organization requires.

[Darcy Forman]

That will be a very nice shop when done. Take heart in the cost department though. Just think, if you were building that shop where I live that sewer line would need to be eight feet blow grade and the shop footing would need to be four feet below grade. Imagine how much more that would end up costing you. It is cheaper building where frost is not a problem. On a side note I was in San Antonio in Novemeber for a water conference. Very nice city. That river walk is very nice feature of the city. I enjoyed visisting the Alamo as well.

[Jim Andrew]

I haven't heard of your organization, but cool that you can involve yourself with volunteer work that matters.

[David A Anderson]

I haven't heard of your organization, but cool that you can involve yourself with volunteer work that matters.

We have over 1000 members with the average age about 70. Only about 250 are still physically able and active. Our jobs range from small to large depending on need. I worked the biggest one ever in Charlestown NH last summer. We laid up 75' trusses on a 7500sqft building. Those rascals were hard to handle. I'm always hawking for more members anytime I have a chance. It is a great reason to travel the country.

In the picture I'm standing on the roof with the brown shirt and white hard hat.

[Jamie Lynch]

Looking good. Good luck with all the inspections.

[David A Anderson]

Got the slab poured. Total cost to me was $4.05sq ft with 3000psi mix and no fly ash in the mix. Tomorrow I will wreck the forms, grade the perimeter and the building arrives Wednesday. Yippee!

[David A Anderson]

Two more pics

[David A Anderson]

While wrecking the forms I decided to lay in my water lines. 100' of 3/4 PVC. I tapped into the house water line and it was really rusted galvanized from the 40's so I replaced one joint with PVC from the meter to the first set of threads. It will all have to be replaced soon.

[David A Anderson]

Material arrived Jan 15. Neat gizmo to get it off the truck

[David A Anderson]

Standing the columns Jan 16. These all went up very fast and easy.

[David A Anderson]

Hanging the wall girts Jan 16. We got 3 sides done in one day. They bolt on really fast. We attached the wind bracing cables in the walls which really stiffens it up, so I didn't worry about any wind.

[David A Anderson]

Hanging the rafters. The previous "girt posting" had a rafter on the Gen pole. Jan 17 we hung the rafters. This was the most difficult part, especially the first one. Those I beams way up on that jenpole we made were hard to maneuver in place. I was too cheap to rent a sky jack. I do own the blue lift, however. I bought it at an auction 4 years ago to trim all my oak trees. The second and 3rd set of rafters went pretty easy. OSHA would have put us all in jail if they had come by. We attached tag lines to each end with two guys outside the slab to guide the rafters in position after I raised the the rafter set above the column height. It was all done with safety as no one was under the rafters before they were attached.

Once the rafter is above the column height one man pulls his end down and attaches two top bolts loosely, then I lower the bucket and the other man on the other end pulls his rafter to the column and it drops into position so he can stab a spud wrench in the hole, line it up and insert his bolts, all done from outside the building frame.

[David A Anderson]

We also hung a few purlins on Thurs and finished all of them on Friday. We used the lift to raise them then slid in place. The eave strut purlins were heavy and hard to land. They were also bay specific and we ended up trying all 4 before we got the first one set. Grrrrr! They were not labeled by Mueller. We lost at least an hour messing with those.

[David A Anderson]

Installing the wind bracing cables. This was near the end of Friday. All the angle bracing was installed, and all of the wind bracing cables installed.