EddieWalker
Epic Contributor
When I built my house, I built a lean to onto the side of my shop that has proven to be a good place to store stuff, but it is also an eye sore that I don't care to see every time I look at it. I was going to pour concrete, but that never happened, and I won't make that mistake again. As you can see, it's a mess.
My wife came up with the idea that we should turn the storage area into a 3 car garage. We worked on a plan and that's going to be our big project for next year. Maybe even this year, but next year for sure. In order to do this, I need to relocate what is in my lean to storage area. Ideally, I want to build a big shop for everything, but that would mean a long delay on building the 3 car garage, which is our priority right now.
I perfect spot for this is along the end of my chicken coop. We are slowly cutting down on how many birds are in there. We where at 40 and now there are 10. We have 2 other coops that are in a better location, so this coop will eventually get a concrete floor and become our firewood storage shed. I was going to extend it, but the roofline is too low, so I'm going to go with a single pitch loafing shed type roof and hope it doesn't look to ridiculous. The biggest drawback to this location is in how close it is to my septic tank. It would have been faster and cheaper to bring in a cement truck, but there just isn't a way to get it close to the pad without risking damage to the septic tank. To avoid any issues there, I'm mixing all of the concrete myself.
The first weekend, I moved the fence back so I had plenty of room to work and the dogs where still secure in their yard. Then I built up the pad by hauling in a dozen yards of dirt with my backhoe. It has a one yard bucket and the dirt pile isn't too far away.
Second weekend I drilled the holes for the 5 posts and set them in concrete. I bought a pallet of 60 pound sacks for this. I went with treated 4x6's since Home Depot no longer sells 6x6 posts here, and Lowes was out of stock. I could have searched for them at other places, but they looked like really nice posts, so I bought them to keep things moving along. The next day I set the forms, dug my footing and tied the rebar.
Third weekend I got up early and started mixing and spreading 84 sacks of concrete. I bought another pallet during the week and had it there before the weekend. That was painful, but doable. I'm not great with finishing concrete, so the results are good enough to live with and not stress over. I would never do concrete for a paying client, I'm just not that good at it. Next day I pulled the forms and set them in the next section. I'm doing the concrete in three sections of 10 1/2 x 10 feet.
Last weekend I poured the second section using 95 sacks. Then on Sunday, I built the forms, dug the footings and tied the rebar for the third section. I bought two pallets of 60 pound concrete during the week and had them sitting next to the pad to make handling them as easiest as possible. I have pallet forks on my backhoe that makes unloading the concrete fast and easy. The hardest part is getting somebody at Lowes to load me up. With my Military discount, and their bulk pricing for buying the entire pallet, I'm spending $148 for each pallet. When I built my Akita Swimming Pool, I bought a lot more rebar then I needed, which I used for this project. Each stick is on an 18 inch grid. I have two 20 foot sticks left over, which really worked out nicely.
My cement mixer burned out on me when I was almost done mixing on Saturday. It's an Imer, so parts are easy to find. It's $42 for a new capacitor, and hopefully it's here by the end of the week. I had to mix two sacks in a five gallon bucket with my Spade Drill to finish on Saturday.
Here are a few pictures from Sunday evening after I was done tying rebar. You can see how it's lined up with the chicken coop.
My chickens left something to remember them by.
My wife came up with the idea that we should turn the storage area into a 3 car garage. We worked on a plan and that's going to be our big project for next year. Maybe even this year, but next year for sure. In order to do this, I need to relocate what is in my lean to storage area. Ideally, I want to build a big shop for everything, but that would mean a long delay on building the 3 car garage, which is our priority right now.
I perfect spot for this is along the end of my chicken coop. We are slowly cutting down on how many birds are in there. We where at 40 and now there are 10. We have 2 other coops that are in a better location, so this coop will eventually get a concrete floor and become our firewood storage shed. I was going to extend it, but the roofline is too low, so I'm going to go with a single pitch loafing shed type roof and hope it doesn't look to ridiculous. The biggest drawback to this location is in how close it is to my septic tank. It would have been faster and cheaper to bring in a cement truck, but there just isn't a way to get it close to the pad without risking damage to the septic tank. To avoid any issues there, I'm mixing all of the concrete myself.
The first weekend, I moved the fence back so I had plenty of room to work and the dogs where still secure in their yard. Then I built up the pad by hauling in a dozen yards of dirt with my backhoe. It has a one yard bucket and the dirt pile isn't too far away.
Second weekend I drilled the holes for the 5 posts and set them in concrete. I bought a pallet of 60 pound sacks for this. I went with treated 4x6's since Home Depot no longer sells 6x6 posts here, and Lowes was out of stock. I could have searched for them at other places, but they looked like really nice posts, so I bought them to keep things moving along. The next day I set the forms, dug my footing and tied the rebar.
Third weekend I got up early and started mixing and spreading 84 sacks of concrete. I bought another pallet during the week and had it there before the weekend. That was painful, but doable. I'm not great with finishing concrete, so the results are good enough to live with and not stress over. I would never do concrete for a paying client, I'm just not that good at it. Next day I pulled the forms and set them in the next section. I'm doing the concrete in three sections of 10 1/2 x 10 feet.
Last weekend I poured the second section using 95 sacks. Then on Sunday, I built the forms, dug the footings and tied the rebar for the third section. I bought two pallets of 60 pound concrete during the week and had them sitting next to the pad to make handling them as easiest as possible. I have pallet forks on my backhoe that makes unloading the concrete fast and easy. The hardest part is getting somebody at Lowes to load me up. With my Military discount, and their bulk pricing for buying the entire pallet, I'm spending $148 for each pallet. When I built my Akita Swimming Pool, I bought a lot more rebar then I needed, which I used for this project. Each stick is on an 18 inch grid. I have two 20 foot sticks left over, which really worked out nicely.
My cement mixer burned out on me when I was almost done mixing on Saturday. It's an Imer, so parts are easy to find. It's $42 for a new capacitor, and hopefully it's here by the end of the week. I had to mix two sacks in a five gallon bucket with my Spade Drill to finish on Saturday.
Here are a few pictures from Sunday evening after I was done tying rebar. You can see how it's lined up with the chicken coop.
My chickens left something to remember them by.
