Thread: Midnight's Shed

MM

That is a very impressive floor. And still more finishing to come!

Regards
Paul

PS: The hardening figures refer to the compressive strength, which is the forte of concrete. 20MPa is the standard minimum for floors measured, I think, at 28 days. Compressive strength can be increased by slowing down the drying process and keeping the concrete continually wet. I once saw some concrete core samples that had been subjected to a slow regime of drying. Although it was nominally 20MPa a destructive test resulted in failure at 60MPa.: A phenomenal result. Concrete continues to develop strength for up to a year although 75% of it's strength is probably reached in the first month after being laid.

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

The hardening figures refer to the compressive strength, which is the forte of concrete. 20MPa is the standard minimum for floors measured, I think, at 28 days. Compressive strength can be increased by slowing down the drying process and keeping the concrete continually wet. I once saw some concrete core samples that had been subjected to a slow regime of drying. Although it was nominally 20MPa a destructive test resulted in failure at 60MPa.: A phenomenal result. Concrete continues to develop strength for up to a year although 75% of it's strength is probably reached in the first month after being laid.

Thanks for the information, Paul!

This layer is only up to about 12mm thick, their suggestion was to leave it for a few days before setting anything heavy on it - our plan is to give it about a fortnight. It was certainly dry enough the next day to safely walk on, and considering the floor previously was full of oil and paint stains, and old dynabolts that had been tapped back to "about" floor level, this represents a massive improvement.

Given the epoxy floor can't go down for another 5 weeks or so, my plan in the meantime is to start working on electrics, and the dividing wall between what will be the divider between the woodwork shop and the office (a.k.a. the money making side versus the money spending side)

Originally Posted by Midnight Man

Thanks for the information, Paul!

This layer is only up to about 12mm thick, their suggestion was to leave it for a few days before setting anything heavy on it - our plan is to give it about a fortnight. It was certainly dry enough the next day to safely walk on, and considering the floor previously was full of oil and paint stains, and old dynabolts that had been tapped back to "about" floor level, this represents a massive improvement.

Given the epoxy floor can't go down for another 5 weeks or so, my plan in the meantime is to start working on electrics, and the dividing wall between what will be the divider between the woodwork shop and the office (a.k.a. the money making side versus the money spending side)

MM

Given that this space is dual purpose, which I'm sure is a very good way to go, I would look carefully at your dust extraction systems when the time comes. primary DC and room filtering too. A good seal (barrier) between office and workshop will be essential.

Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

MM

Given that this space is dual purpose, which I'm sure is a very good way to go, I would look carefully at your dust extraction systems when the time comes. primary DC and room filtering too. A good seal (barrier) between office and workshop will be essential.

Regards
Paul

Absolutely, and thank you for the wise words! The dividing wall will be solid, no door or any access between the two spaces.

And dust extraction plans include a CV1800, with 150mm ducting (I've done a fair bit of reading in the dust extraction forums)

A bit more progress this week - after all the levelling compound dried out (and turned every window into a waterfall... who knew there was a river of water to evaporate?), we let it set for a couple of weeks to dry out.

The folks who lay epoxy floors came out, and gave the workshop area two coats of epoxy:

Epoxy floor.jpg

They will return on Friday and give this two coats of Polyurethane. And from there, we will be "hands off" for two weeks whilst that fully dries and cures.

So - it's been a while since an update, and stuff has happened.

Firstly, the floor epoxy ended up not going down correctly, the final coat of Poly went on, and the entire floor ended up cracking like a snake skin:

Epoxy cracking.JPG

The floor guys haven't seen this before, and they're planning on grinding the whole thing back and relaying it from scratch - but we've held off doing that for a bit in order to get some other stuff under way.

First of these was to rough in a couple of air conditioning units, one for the office side, the other for the workshop. With timber frames already in place, that presented a unique opportunity to test the theory I had all along, that being that if access to anything behind the wall was needed, one could always "think outside the box" (literally), and approach from the outside working in, which is what we had the install team do:

Air conditioner pipe install.jpg

At the same time, the electricians wired up a temporary switchboard for us to have power (we had previously dug in the feed from the main house, but left it until now to light it up as it wasn't required):

Temp Powerboard.jpg

So, we were ready to start installing some parts of the in-wall insulation and interior lining, so that the air conditioning team could return at a later date and hook up the head units. First, we put in some 88mm Bradford SoundScreen:

Insulation in place.JPG

Then we put our internal lining in place. We made an error in the placement on a couple of the holes at the top, but these will end up being hidden by the ceiling structure when that goes into place, so we left them as is. These holes are the top end of 90 degree elbows that join to conduit inside the walls to enclose the power cables. Inside the ceiling structure, where they come out, we will be mounting Aussie Duct on the plywood panels to carry all these power cables back to the switchboard:

First panel in place.JPG

We had them install the outdoor units behind the shed, way away from earshot for ourselves and our neighbours:

Outside units in place.JPG

The first of these units has now gone "live", and is working away - the second is being completed this Tuesday. In this photo, you can see additional power cables that will end up being installed in the Aussie Duct mentioned above:

First unit in place and running.JPG

From there, we will be lining the rest of the shed in the same fashion - Bradford SoundScreen and plywood, and hopefully that will be done over the next month or so.

Hope your Fujitsu AC lasts longer than mine. In at the end of September, less than 3 hrs running time. Took 3 weeks to get it repaired.

An Air-conditioned shed��. Pure luxury

Originally Posted by Lappa

Hope your Fujitsu AC lasts longer than mine. In at the end of September, less than 3 hrs running time. Took 3 weeks to get it repaired.

Sorry to hear that! Under warranty, I hope?

Originally Posted by riverbuilder

An Air-conditioned shed��. Pure luxury

It is to a degree, but it gets warm here - ordinarily, I wouldn't, but we have so much solar on our roof that running it will be completely carbon-neutral and cost free... I would certainly reconsider if that wasn't the case!

Bob will probably line me up and shoot me for admitting this, but I have never got my dust levels down anything like enough to install air con anyway.
However that is something I am keen change with my next shed. That means first getting the dust collection ducting sorted. This ducting is expensive!
You mentioned that you have a cunning plan for the ceiling. I am looking forward to learning about that.

Originally Posted by Midnight Man

Sorry to hear that! Under warranty, I hope?

Yes - under warranty but it was just the hoops I had to jump through to get it repaired. They wouldn’t come out until the installers had come back, inspected and guaranteed that it wasn’t their fault. Great guys - they were here for 2 1/2 hours running full diagnostics , evacuating and weighing charge, nitrogen testing then regassing and performance testing just to prove it was an electronics fault.They didn’t get paid for their time.
Then I had the wait for the Fujitsu repairer to come out so he could verify it was an electronics fault then another week wait for parts to come in then another week to get it fixed.
The outside motherboard was fritzed. Major surgery.

22BFA96F-18A0-44BC-B917-A5A72831BE47.jpeg

Well, we paused things for a little bit to spend some weekends running around in the lead up to Christmas obtaining, and ferrying materials back to finish the rest of the fit out.

40 plywood panels came up from Sydney from the folks at Trademaster.

We have around 16 bags of 580x1160x88mm Bradford Soundscreen insulation stashed around the place - who knew insulation took up *that* much space?!?

We have a load of various sizes of trunking, ducting, conduit, elbows, mounting blocks and cable all ready to go.

So, today, we went out and started cutting insulation to size, as well as the first piece of the plywood lining. Slow going, as we were figuring out through the entire day the best "process" to use to get holes in the right spot etc. However, we got all that figured out, and the end result of that is showing here:

First panel installed.jpg

From here, we will work our way along each wall, and eventually mount some trunking at the top of the panels to carry network and electrics back to the switchboard.

That trunking will end up being hidden by the ceiling - but the ceiling design will allow us access to this later if need be. In this way, all the electrics will be running in a conduit behind the wall, but if access is needed, a replacement cable could be snaked through using the old one as a draw wire etc.

At the moment, we're cabling each power point with cable rated to run a double 15A GPO, this will allow us to upgrade any power points that we may install as 10A ones to 15A simply by having an electrician change over the actual power point - the cabling will be ready to go.

Studs at 600 centres is the go. How thick is the ply? Is it perforated ply? Is this the same shed started in April 2019 or another one?

Originally Posted by Midnight Man

we're cabling each power point with cable rated to run a double 15A GPO, this will allow us to upgrade any power points that we may install as 10A ones to 15A simply by having an electrician change over the actual power point - the cabling will be ready to go.

Since a 10A plug will plug into a 15A socket and the fuse is only there to protect the wiring you may as well have the sparky fit 15A outlets from the start and save the potential recall and replacement powerpoint cost.