At Home In The Woods

[jinman]

I had a screw-drive opener that was a pain to keep oiled. I wore out one jackscrew follower when rust damaged the threads. When the controller finally failed after a lightning storm, I replaced it with a belt-drive opener. It is very quiet and never will require lubrication. I also installed a keypad outside my garage door. This new keypad requires a code for opening the door (it was included with the opener), but if the door is open, you only have to press the button and it will close with no code input. The opener is a Chamberlain I bought at Lowes for just under $200. They are so easy to install that I recommend doing that yourself. My garage door opener is one of my favorite things about my house, but I guess I'm easy to please.

 

[Obed]

Wednesday evening I placed the concrete pad for the H&A unit in its spot. My wife picked it up from a pre-cast concrete store. I put the forks on the FEL and unloaded the pad from our pickup truck. The forks for the FEL really come in handy when you need them. It was a little tricky getting the concrete pad to slide off of the pallet with out the pallet sliding off the forks with the pad. I ended up chaining the pallet to the FEL.

 

[medicshawn]

I currently have a Chamberlain belt drive, I had a type of screw drive before. tThis belt drive is super quiet with no vibrations. I have a room over the garage and you barely notice when it opens. I bought mine from Home depot/Lowes. I shopped by price and what was included in the box. Many different model numbers but the same unit depending on where it's sold. Mine has battery backup and works well. I already had a spring so I just installed it myself. If it breaks you can get parts anywhere.

 

[Obed]

Today my wife and I worked on filling the front porch.

It surprised me when I looked at the porch a few weeks ago as to how much fill would be needed under the front porch. We decided to use a combination of brick debris and gravel as fill. I broke up all the bricks with a sledge hammer so they would pack well.

 

[Diamondpilot]

screw type are supposed to be quieter.

Maybe quieter than a chain drive but not quieter than a belt drive.

In general they quality goes like this and the noise level plus price also follow

Top of the line: belt drive
Middle of the line: screw drive
Low end opener: chain drive

I sold garage door openers for 4 years in college and installed them. The belt drive is top notch. That was 18 years ago.

Never owned a belt drive but have owned 2 screw drive. Too much squeal for me. I do not care for them at all. Even with grease on the they made noise. I now have $99 (on sale) Sears chain drive units on all my doors in the garage. In the barn I have a $99 Genie unit from Lowes. Both Sears units are 14 years old and the Genie is 20 plus with no issues.

 

[Obed]

The first thing we had to do was to plug with mortar 3 spots where the brick crew laid 4 inch hollow blocks on their sides. We had solid 4 inch blocks and the brick crew new it. They should have used them. So we filled in 3 blocks with mortor to help make them stronger. Blocks sitting sidesways are not very strong.

We intended to ask the brick workers to fill these blocks with mortar when they came out to finish the brick at the back porch. Unfortunately we forgot to ask them so we had to do it ourselves.

 

[Obed]

We rented a tamper to pack the fill so it will properly support the front porch slab. This thing worked extremely well and was easy to use.

You can see the difference in the bricks before and after I broke them up with a sledge hammer. I'm not sure how important it was to break them up but we didn't that way to make sure. If the bricks weren't broken up, gravel might possibly seep into the holes in the bricks. I'm sure no contractor would go to the effort of breaking up the bricks - it might not be needed. However, we wanted to do everything we could to prevent the front porch slab from cracking.

 

[Obed]

My wife did most of the tractor driving while I did most of the hand shoveling, breaking bricks, and tamping. We had one large piece of concrete waste that was too thick to break up. It didn't help that the concrete truck driver dumped his waste on top of a pile of gravel. So the concrete waste has a bunche of gravel in it to make it stronger.

 

[PAGUY]

Obed - I have the same type forklift forks as you have but haven't used them yet. I am planning to lift sections of concrete pavement that has sunken over the years in the back next to the foundation of an addition to my house. I plan on lifting them and filling the back with B2 stone before relaying them in place.

 

[Obed]

Here's a spot where the brick guys poured mortar waste on top of loose brick waste. I first tried to break up the brick/mortar slab with the back hoe but had marginal success. It turned out to be easier to break up the slab using my sledge hammer/mall.