Thread: The electric shed

Great another shed build to watch.

So in the planning stages I went and visited my local friendly engineer. Note carefully I did not say "tame", When their bills arrive you are left knowing they are not "tame"!

I want a barn style shed, I says. Make the centre section 6 metres wide, the two wings on either side 4 metres wide and add a 2.4 metre extension down one side of the southern wing. Make it 12 meters deep and add a 3 meter extension to the back of the 6 meter wide center section. I want a crane beam down the middle, says I. I have some posts, I says. Yep pretty good posts, says me. Square galvanised steel posts! 200mm by 200mm by 6mm thick walls, some of BHP's finest (when they used to do that sort of thing!) only 5 of them but lets use them to support the center section and lots of 150mm x 150mm x 6mm posts for the other columns. Great stuff! I think he stopped listening to my enthusiasm just before the end of my speech.

Several months pass, to my consternation. Finally a plan arrives, great thinks me. I examine the plan closely and, lo and behold, he's made the center posts 200 by 200 by 6 and all the others are wimpy little 89 x 89 x 5mm columns. You'd nearly bend them in your bare hands, well if you stronger than me anyways!

Not to be put off I am using my posts, after all I paid for them and they are some of BHP's finest etc etc.

Then one day while working on my posts (they came with 1.5 meters of 150 x 75 channel welded on to the top of them, which makes them a pain to transport, so I cut the channel off) I noticed that some of them seemed a bit thin in the wall section for 6mm. I had a nice new set of digital calipers (okay so second hand off fleabay) and took to my columns with gusto and some trepidation. Most of the 150 x 150 columns turned out to be 5mm wall thickness. The one I had previously measured was 6mm and two I could not move were 8mm wall thickness. I felt mildly embarrassed.

And, yes, it got worse!

I looked at my 200 x 200 columns, took my calipers in trembling hands and measured the wall thickness. They were 8mm thick. Phew! However to to be 100% sure of things I measured the sides. I never knew steel square columns were available in 180 x 180 sections. I do now. Trust me on this!

The moral of the story is that I have learned to to measure all second hand building materials (if they are critical to the design) because looks can be deceiving and one measurement may not reflect all the items in a pile.

I ordered 5 extra 200 x 200 x 6 columns and relocated the 180 x 180 sections to some corners. I am well beyond the engineers original design specs on the columns. I want strength in this shed. During cyclones we get cut off by flooded creeks and so can't leave the property. One of the functions of this shed is as a cyclone shelter.


So today, the builder managed to get the excavations to swallow 23 cubic meters of concrete. More easily imagined as 5 truck loads. He said it was not hard and that at one stage he thought it might take as much as 30 cubes.

Twenty three meters of concrete probably weighs close to 50 tonnes.

At this stage, we are looking......Strong!


Cheers

The Beryl Bloke

P.S. I now have about 25 sections of 150mm wide channel in my "will come in handy" and "may actually be useful, one day" pile!

Originally Posted by Theberylbloke

So in the planning stages I went and visited my local friendly engineer. Note carefully I did not say "tame", When their bills arrive you are left knowing they are not "tame"!

Indeed, Just got the bill from 1 who is drawing up some designs for alterations to our work building.
$200 per hour and he has the cheek to charge 90 cents per km for travel on top of that!

Originally Posted by Kiwibrucee

Indeed, Just got the bill from 1 who is drawing up some designs for alterations to our work building.
$200 per hour and he has the cheek to charge 90 cents per km for travel on top of that!

Indeed, having engineers carry a little sign around that says something like " Warning - Will bite without provocation! Do not pet the engineer." sometimes seems quite reasonable to me.

Cheers

The Beryl Bloke

Originally Posted by Theberylbloke

So today, the builder managed to get the excavations to swallow 23 cubic meters of concrete. More easily imagined as 5 truck loads. He said it was not hard and that at one stage he thought it might take as much as 30 cubes.

And where are the pics of said excavation and concrete ?

Hi DJ,

The photos are in download land and I expect to have them available real soon now!

In the meantime here is the shed plan and a photo of the site.

The shed plan has a couple of benches drawn in along with a timber rack just inside the roller door to the right and some narrow shelving at the back. The area between the timber rack and the shelves is for making splinters. The center section is open at this stage for work on vehicles or whatever. The front two bays on the left are for general mechanical work and the bit behind that for metalwork. The verandah is for dust extraction (possibly moving to outside the woody area) air compressor and back up generator.

The photo shows a cut that is about 6 meters deep and contains a lot of rock in the wall. The excavations for the footings end just in front of this wall. The ground back there was too hard for the backhoe and it's auger. Consequently the post holes were dug with the 300mm wide bucket on the backhoe. This is one of the main reasons for the large volume of concrete.

More shortly.

Cheers

The Beryl Bloke

Okay, back from download land with some pictures.

The open trench is at the front of the shed and was taken Tuesday afternoon. The trench mesh is in and most of the bolts for the posts are installed.

The next two photos are taken from above and off to the left. I can't easily get much further away, thus the two shots, one of the front section and one of the back, with some overlap. You can start to get an idea of how it will look and work. There is one "odd" post at the back left. It got left there to support a roof beam when I changed the back wall to cut out the dead space that I would never do much with. While it looked good on the plan it's too close to the back wall and clutters up the area.

Not much will happen on site now for a week or more while the roof beams for the center section are being fabbed and sent off for galvanising. The 12 sections of roof beams are about half completed as of today. My schedule is starting to slip a little as I was hoping to have the roof beams delivered this week. More likely it will be another two weeks before they are ready for delivery to site. Once they are sent off we'll get the posts fabbed and hopefully some of them erected before the roof beams arrive on site. I also have to move the electricity service and meter box.

The site is a bit "tight". Everything has to arrive on site in the right order. There is not much room to store lots of completed posts, roof structure and add a crane plus mobile welding plant and scissor lift. In fact all that might fit but it would not be workable.

In the photo of the trench excavations you can see two stacks of pallets and one upset stack. These are for building the center section of roof at ground level. All 16.2 meters by 7 meters and 4 tonnes of it. There is a crane beam that runs down the full length of the center of the shed. That beam gets set up on the pallets, the roof beams are bolted onto the top of the beam, the roof purlins are fixed in place and the roof sheeting screwed off, yes even the fascia and gutters are to be fitted. Next up a 30 tonne crane lifts the whole thing into place and 48 bolts later, Bob's a close relative on your mum's side. This is likely easier said than done. I originally wanted to get all the solar panels bolted down before the lift as well but our crane operator wanted 4 roof sheets left off for the lift, so plan B for the solar install is under consideration. Yes, photos and maybe even a video will be available from that day's work! Why build the roof on the ground? Avoids working at heights. While I and many others often work at heights and are fairly comfortable doing so, it is higher risk work. The peak of the roof is about 6.5 meters up.

Cheers

The Beryl Bloke

So after a rather longer than planned for wait, some of the steel arrived late this afternoon. It may not look like much in the photo, the longest beams are about 6 metres and weigh up to 200 kG each for a total of around 3 tonnes of steel. There are still another few columns and all the roof and crane beams to come.

The plan is to get all these columns installed so there is room on the site to build the roof.

Each of the columns has a base plate welded to it. Each base plate has two or four holes drilled in it to sit onto bolts set into the foundations. I have been slowly wire brushing and greasing the threads of all the bolts the columns mount onto. I have also used a level to get all the nuts, that sit below the base plates, level as well. If the base plates were dead flat then the columns would be exactly vertical. That won't quite happen as the welding of the base plates, to the columns, causes them to warp, not a lot, but enough. Still, with the nuts level, we have a good start.

Tomorrow we'll be working on wire brushing back the welded areas, putting down a good layer of "Galmet" or the like and using rust converter to get into areas the wire wheel and angle grinder won't reach.

The columns are scheduled to be erected on Thursday.

It's good to be moving forward again.

Cheers

The Beryl Bloke

It's been awhile since the last post....

I now have most of the roof on. The section not installed is to allow views of the sky or is waiting for an extension to the side of the shed or perhaps an act of God. It's coming real soon....

The windows between the two roof sections have been framed up and the builder is getting prices on them. The windows are going to work very well. The overhang on the top roof is enough to stop direct sunlight turning the workshop into a greenhouse. However, I notice that sunlight reflects off the lower roof in through the window space and then reflects down into the shed, off the bottom of the aircell insulation, which is aluminium foil. I am quite impressed by the amount of light this lets in. It was not a design feature, although I might claim it as such from now on, just because.

Photos of the roofing and one shot of the inside showing that I have thrown some paint around as well. This photo also shows how the aircell helps reflect the light around. In this case it is reflecting the late afternoon sunlight on the concrete floor.

Cheers

The Beryl Blokemisc 004.jpgmisc 005.jpgmisc 006.jpg

Looking good

cool

That is a great looking shed. Should withstand a good blow with all of that gravity built into the foundations and frame work.
I reckon it won't win a prize in the 'cheap sheds' competition, but will last many lifetimes.
Thanks for the pics.

Alan...

Nice shed - great size.

Perspective is interesting when one considers the size of a 5kWh solar system perched on one section of one side of the roof, that's a pretty large shed going up there!

Considering you appear to be around 21º to 23º latitude, the pitch of the roof will probably be about perfect as a bonus.

Mick.