Team Seacats

While it may appear to be festive, the motivation is tainted….the lights keep the concrete in the post 4 degrees above ambient temperature and delayed freezing of the concrete!  My neighbors thought it was a decent festive display but the port and starboard reference was completely lost on all of them.  It does, however, make me really wish I had run some conduit under the concrete to have discrete electrical options to the far gate post.

Festive Lights

Pickets are up!  The steel held up marvelously…them are some nice gates.  I will be cutting some architectural shape to the top of the gates once they’ve dried out enough (and it’s warm enough) for staining.

pickets on the steel frame

gates - structure side

Gates Open

Finally…the gates are up and the hardware in place.  They came together amazingly well and I got lucky in a couple of areas considering all the possible variables from fabrication, welding, galvanizing, unproven hardware, a last minute hinge pin design, and setting the rather heavy posts (and filling them with concrete).  I admit that filling the posts with concrete was considerable over-kill but concrete is cheap (until you need to remove it).  To prevent my threaded stainless steel hinge pins from being bound too severely to the concrete, I wrapped the threads with several layers of vinyl electrical tape.  This way I should be able to adjust them later if I need to for some reason.  With just a shot of grease on the zerk fittings on the hinge blocks, the gates are completely silent and I paid enough attention to getting the posts plum that the gates stay at whatever open angle you leave them (until the wind moves them).  I ran well beyond my $250 budget with the gates but  I upgraded substantially from the original plan for a couple of simple chain link gates (that I already bought but wouldn’t fit due the contractor pouring the drive wider than drawn).  I’m now at around $1,000  (including the welder, galvanizing, and the wood soon to be mounted) – but the result is much much nicer and it would have been in the middle thousands to have had someone else custom fabricate and install them – so I’m still quite pleased about the arrangement especially considering that it justified adding a wire-feed MIG welder to my arsenal.

The weather has turned pretty sour again (rain/sleet/snow) so I’m probably back on inside projects this weekend.  Hopefully I can finish framing the upstairs  dumbwaiter shaft as well as the bottom shaft and entry platform to the garage.  I just bought a forced air propane heater that should make it bearable to work inside while our temps are in the 20′s.  I really want to start working to weatherize the curved fence stringers but the garage isn’t insulated yet and it will probably be just too cold for working with fiberglass even with the propane heater in action.  Still plenty to keep busy with until we get the next warm snap so no rush.

Gates on Hinged

View from near the street

Hinge Pins Ready for Installation

I took a day off work today to burn up some remaining vacation time and made more progress on the gates.  Boy, I’ll be glad when I’m done mixing and setting concrete by hand!  The gate posts are in and curing…hopefully the cold tonight (in the 20′s) won’t hurt the concrete set.  These 8 foot Schedule 40 steel 3″ pipe (3.5″ o.d.) are now set three feet into the ground and surrounded by 240 lbs of concrete (on each one!).  Oy…my back!  Keeps me young – right?  I was pretty worried about being able to get them set properly in relation to each other but I’m pretty darn pleased and don’t think I could have done any better if given a second chance.  They’re within 1/16″ within the intended separation from each other and within 1/16″ of matching elevation.  They should be just fine and I was surprised to luck out and set them so close on the first try.  I put some insulation ontop of the concrete in the ground to keep the surface from freezing tonight and hopefully the post in the center won’t act too much like a heat sink cooling the entire depth of concrete.  I hope to fabricate some hinge pins tomorrow but it will be a week or so before the concrete is hard enough to start setting the gates.

one post set

two posts set

480 lbs of concrete

Oh, and the picture I promised about the central “spine” I added in the upstairs floor structure…here it is.  This acts like bridging between the floor joists (that probably should have been in place to begin with).  This additional vertical OSB is glued and screwed to each truss.  It made a big difference in the floor stiffness and now, although it’s acceptable, the center of the room is stiffer than 25% near the walls.  I’ve decided to make two more similar runs down each side on the other vertical upright provided by the truss structure.  It won’t hurt, it will cost less than $20 (and a couple of evenings) and it would be impossible to do later.  I’ll probably work on that some this weekend.

central spine

Progress was feeling really slow there for a while – the construction of the gates and gaining some welding ability took some time.  While the steel items were at the galvanizers, I started knocking out a couple of smaller jobs and it seems like things are starting to cook along.  It feels like I’ve been working on fencing forever and it was nice to move onto some other tasks.  The steel came from the galvanizers today though and it’s time get back working on fencing!  They have a really thick layer of zinc on them….more than I expected.  The galvanizing did cost considerably more than I had anticipated….in fact, I could have constructed the gates from stainless steel for less than the cost of the mild steel plus galvanizing.  When I first inquired about the cost, they neglected to mention the $250 minimum fee they have in place.  They’re done, though, and they look great.  It should be 18 years before they start to show any signs of age provided someone doesn’t run into them first!  I hope to start digging the post holes and pouring concrete this week.  However, the weather has turned very cold (well…for South Carolina anyway) and it’s near freezing by the time I get home at night.  Hopefully we’ll get a warm spell soon and I can open up some earth and pour some concrete.

The Posts (40 lbs of steel - each!)

The Gates

Are you ready for your closeup?

While waiting on the fencing to come back from the galvanizers, I ran a reinforcing spine in the upstairs floor system to increase the stiffness of the floor.  I was a little disappointed with how springy the floor was when the builder handed everything off to me.  I have a truss floor system and it was designed with two parallel vertical members separated by about 18 inches in the center.   I used that to install a series of 15″ tall vertical OSB panels to form a continuous box spine down the entire length of the building.  It significantly increased the floor stiffness and I’m satisfied with it now.  I neglected to take any pictures of that yet but will do so sometime in the next couple of days.  I also installed the electrical boxes in the garage for the light switches, door openers, and outlets downstairs and started the framing for the upstairs interior structures.

The bathroom and the dumbwaiter closet are now also framed.  I have some hesitation about framing the matching downstairs dumbwaiter closet because I’m still learning about the code requirements for such a system and I don’t necessarily want to open up a can of worms with the electrical code inspector…though I don’t intend to skip any codes I would just like to skip over any major inquiry.  I am a mechanical/electrical engineer and have a background with machinery safety and have performed my share of safety system risk assessments in the past.  This system will be safe and inoperable from the interior (so you cannot use it solo like an elevator) – however, we will be able to wheel in a handtruck loaded with boxes (space large enough for a person) so there are a lot of things to consider. I have to finish up some of the dumbwaiter upper closet details that are waiting on some particulars about the design of the car…but I should have that done soon enough to finish the framing there and move on to the upstairs electrical wiring (and inspections).  The bathroom framing is complete and is designed slightly larger than the smallest bathroom I could build to code – it is an office space first and foremost!  However, I did intentionally  space the interior windows so that if someone wanted to turn this into an apartment, either bathroom wall could be moved out to easily accommodate a tub and/or shower without requiring a major exterior overhaul. The plumbing will also take this into accord.

The Bathroom

the dumb-waiter and the bathroom

Yes, I’m STILL working on fencing.  In my defense, I’ve had a lot of other work get in the way and slow progress…and I’ve gone sailing a time or two in the last several weeks.  However, I’m still making steady progress on the fencing and resisting the urge to start working on other areas of the garage until the exterior is complete.  Once I get the fencing done, it’s on to wiring the new structure and once the county inspections are done things should start flying as I contract out much of the finishing work.  I did absorb and evening distraction by installing a new touch screen navigation and stereo Kenwood unit in my truck that I found at a great deal.  I decided to pull the truck into the garage for the first time and do the installation work there.  I was, and am still, shocked at how much space is in the garage!  My Chevy truck is the 2nd longest version Silverado they make  – note that the garage door is closed behind the truck in the picture below!  I’m going to have a lot of fun in this space when it’s done.

Roomy

OK, onto the projects accomplished in the last couple of weeks… I am still welding on the gates periodically but they’re almost complete.   With some help from my buddy Mark, we machined the blocks from 1.5″ square steel bar.  One gate now has both hinge blocks welded in place.  I finally feel like I’m getting the hang of this welding stuff and am starting to get a feel for the right temperature and wire feed speed – I’m pretty proud of the last several beads I’ve laid on these blocks and the reinforcing plates.  I’m ready to build my next trailer now!

Machined Hinge Block

Block Welded to Gate - prior to tie-in plate

Upper Hinge Welded and Reinforced

One last thing I need to sort out on the gates is the posts.  They’ll have the hinge pins mounted (on all-thread going through the posts)  and they’ll have plates to attach the wood fence to.  Looking at the curve of the driveway, I decided a curved fence would look really cool but it took some experimenting to figure out how to build it and I needed to figure out how everything was going to fit to the big corner posts so I can weld on the proper fittings prior to galvanizing.  This past Sunday, I hammered in and concreted three galvanized posts for the curved fencing and purchased some 7/16″ pressure treated marine plywood and ripped it into 4″ strips x 8′ long.  I had initially thought these would be flexible enough to bend to the radius to match the drive, stack them three wide, and glue and screw them together to make two solid horizontal arms to attach pickets to.   I broke the first strip of plywood I tried to bend and decided I needed a plan B.  I washed down a beer while staring at the problem came up with a plan B and a plan C.  Plan B was to wet the plywood and see if it gets more flexible.  Plan C would be to kerf cut the plywood – or kerf cut some 1×4″ pressure treated planks and find a way to make that curve.  I took one strip of the plywood and hosed it down before covering it with wet towels.  It sat like that overnight.  I got home Monday night and started clamping the wet plywood to the posts – it worked but the wood was pretty stressed and I decided to let it sit for a day and dry a little to get an idea for how much it would relax in that position.  Meanwhile, I stacked the other strips of ply and wetted them down in a similar fashion.  Tonight I removed the clamps and the wood took to the curve pretty well holding pretty close to it’s shape.  So I started building the first of two horizontal wood braces by stacking the plywood three strips wide, staggering the joints, and putting in 2 to 4 screws every 8″.  Because I broke the first piece, I’m a little short on finishing it with plywood.  Since the ends are straight, I’ll scarf in some pressure treated 2×4′s to complete the horizontal braces.   It looks like it’s going to work great.  Tomorrow I hope to get started on the 2nd one after this one dries a little.

Beginning the stacked curve

1st Strip Almost Complete

1st Strip Complete