The Silver Buick wants a garage.

[SuperBuickGuy]

Re: The Silver Buick wants a garage.

What kind of shop are you going to build? frame? steel beam? post? that helps determine what kind of filling you may or may want to do. A post shop wants to be in virgin soil, if you fill you have to put posts down further into the ground, thus adding to the costs. A steel beam shop e.g. steel truss, you don't have to worry about being on fill. As for retaining walls, it's far cheaper just to run a steep slope ... I didn't realize how little the powers-that-be cared about steep bank stuff.... frame shops are the most expensive

[Schtauffer]

Re: The Silver Buick wants a garage.

Wow, Randal! This thread will keep me intrigued...

[TheSilverBuick]

Re: The Silver Buick wants a garage.

The shop type is still up in the air. I hadn't thought of using a block foundation for part of it to limit fill requirements. I still would like to see as much of the southside levelled out for driveway space.

I got the dxf off the data collector, so tomorrow I hope to have a 3D picture of it.

[Scott Liggett]

Re: The Silver Buick wants a garage.

You're at a point now that how you decide to build this building could mean the difference of just having a shop/garage; or the coolest man-cave in all Nevada. Just a cinder block building, or something people would day trip from Vegas to pay money to see. Choice is yours.

That hill and back road has got my mind spinnnig of neato/groovy/gee whiz ideas.

[SuperBuickGuy]

Re: The Silver Buick wants a garage.

the reason I was asking... if I had it to do again, I think I'd use more fill to bring the shop up to the same level as the house. At the time, that wasn't my thinking... don't get me wrong, I do love that the shop is below grade and completely out of sight from my neighbors, but there are times when it would be nice not to have to take a run at getting up the hill from the shop (yeah, paving would fix this, but I need to fix my finances that were wrecked by this last year or so)....

[TheSilverBuick]

Re: The Silver Buick wants a garage.

Yeah I get what you mean for sure, I've thought about that and when the snow is on the ground. I'm hoping to make a decent ramp grade out of it, starting in the middle of my upper yard and toeing out around the middle of the lower lot. The actual elevation will determine how that works out.

Chad and I were talking about a portable winch for moving cars around using anchor points in the shop and I mentioned I had thought about using the anchor point idea at the top of my hill so I could lower cars down the hill or pull them up from a flat spot at the top. It would do good for those sketchy icy situations too.

[Bigbuds1]

Re: The Silver Buick wants a garage.

Randal, glad to see you are taking the first steps towards a garage. Take your time and enjoy the research. I will be following your build. :o

[milner351]

Re: The Silver Buick wants a garage.

Randal - I look forward to seeing this come together.

It's easy for the rest of us to arm chair quarter back your shop and your finances - take as many ideas in as you can process and decide for yourself what works best.

Some decisions may come down to what materials / equipment you can get for the best cost.

Look around and see if there are any building material auctions within a reasonable drive of you - you can get some really killer deals on materials that will make a project like this much more affordable - and may allow you to build a larger building for cheaper than you ever thought possible.

I like the anchor point / winch idea - but since you usually work alone - make sure you make it a safe set up with some kind of remote, or - bring in enough fill - or move around enough dirt - so the elevation changes are too extreme.

At least in your area - you don't have to worry about flooding!

[RR]

Re: The Silver Buick wants a garage.

The easy way to determine how much dirt you need- talk to a contractor for a price. As you know, they won't just have to bring in dirt, they will have to level it and compact it. Unless you have a bulldozer and such, the "easy button" here is to decide what level you want your shop built at and have a contractor quote it for you.

My only advice on a shop- build it as big as you can. You can never have too much shop- just not enough projects... :D

[TheSilverBuick]

Re: The Silver Buick wants a garage.

Pay a contractor? That costs money, I'm already not thrilled about the $2G survey bill :'( But at least I know that my new neighbor (who I get the feeling already doesn't like me because I don't have a perfectly manicured lawn) can't say anything about what I'm doing back there (especially since my line goes right into his back fence because ~3ft inside his north fence is mine ;D)

I got the points and made a pretty surface and even prettier contour map. However I apparently didn't dump the points out right as the dxf didn't have labels on them for me to sort them out, so my surface is a little skewed between the top of the lath surveys (which need 3ft subtracted) and the dirt surveys. I went through and deleted some obvious flyers, but it's still not perfect. Once I can sort the points by their attributes/names and subtract the 3ft from the lath points it should look pretty good. I can't upload photos here at work to show the preliminary work.

A preliminary look shows a 22ft rise from the lowest point to the highest :-\ Hard to say what the true dirt volume is until I get the points sorted.

[milner351]

Re: The Silver Buick wants a garage.

Randal -

don't forget your time is worth something - and - sometimes by the time you rent equipment, transport, it, go through the learning curve to operate it, make a few mistakes, re- do it, etc.... you could have hired it done.... and been money ahead.

I know you're not in a major metropolitan area... but get prices from a few different places if you can.

Do you think you can "take down the highs to fill in the lows" or - are you going to have to bring in a bunch of fill??
(the later being much more expensive)

[TheSilverBuick]

Re: The Silver Buick wants a garage.

John, that's why I'm doing the contour work, to figure out my cuts and fills to level it. Mining software is real proficient in volume calculations, cuts, fills and ramp designing ;D I'll know what I have to do once I know exactly what I have to work with. It might be my first time, but I work with and know a bunch of people that have done this stuff before. I'm surrounded by professional equipment operators too ;D

[Eliteman76]

Re: The Silver Buick wants a garage.

I sort of agree with John on this one, Randall. I am no expert, but I have a different battle on my hands: the wife.

I want to build a garage, L shapped if I can help it, adding to the house.
She wants to extend the house out, add space, and I just want to build a garage.

After looking at your land, I am same, but different.
I've got a roughly 15 foot drop on the back edge of my house.



I want to just take and go out 16 feet on my south side of my house, then behind the house come 25 feet off the back, and then run 40 feet wide. My measurements, I would be up by the deck, would have to move the AC and my stairs on the deck, but would give me plent of space.
I would need to dig down for a foundation, and it was suggested to do concrete formed spans like the parking garages use around here, but hell, I don't need a batcave. Most I thought was on the end of the floor, doing some 3 foot wide pits that would be big enough to store a half dozen or so 351c/460 projects, and having rolling benches.

The wife wants to extend the house, so it goes from a bricked foundation of $6k to like a $30-35k expansion that I don't want to get into.
The most I would do for now, on the side of the house, build the deck with the subfloor done so down the line, if we add to the house, hard part is done.
I also fought tooth and nail on the blocking of the view, but won that arguement. Big problem though, adding like that, will kick my ass on taxes.
A seperate "work shop" vs a "addition", I already am awaiting the screw job by the county.

[milner351]

Re: The Silver Buick wants a garage.

John, that's why I'm doing the contour work, to figure out my cuts and fills to level it. Mining software is real proficient in volume calculations, cuts, fills and ramp designing ;D I'll know what I have to do once I know exactly what I have to work with. It might be my first time, but I work with and know a bunch of people that have done this stuff before. I'm surrounded by professional equipment operators too ;D

Any chance you can "borrow" a "small" dozer from the mine for the weekend?

If not - hopefully you can lure one of those operators to the house with some pizza and beer.

running a roller/compactor is a piece of cake - I did that in college when my buddies Dad's excavating company needed an extra flunky.
The question maybe who's truck/trailer you can borrow to move these beasts - unless the rental company delivers....

[TheSilverBuick]

Re: The Silver Buick wants a garage.

No borrowing that kind of equipment :'( I'll rent a backhoe and have a skilled operator from work do the landscaping. The backhoe as mentioned will be driven the 1.7 miles (or whatever it was) from the rental yard to my house. Once the bulk work is done I'll start planning the next phase (fill? compaction? hard spot removal? Someone else do it? I'll do it? etc).

My time is only valuable if I have something else I want to do more, and I'll cross that bridge when/if I get there.