Racing the weather for a <$600 "garage"

[deezler]

I have a lot of equipment that just sits outside, and I hate it. Watching tractor implements and trailers sink into the soil, get blasted by rain and snow, go through repeated freeze/thaw cycles, and get UV damage in sunny areas, or grow mildew in the shady areas. Or frozen to the ground when you go to move/mount them.

So it was time for more covered storage - but a big budget building and the hassle of permits was not in the cards right now.

So when Harbor freight sent me a "please come back" 25%-off-anything coupon, I decided to apply it to their bigger tent garage kit.

12 ft. x 20 ft. Truck/SUV Portable Garage

Amazing deals on this 12Ft X 20Ft Truck/Suv Portable Garage at Harbor Freight. Quality tools & low prices.

www.harborfreight.com

Now I'm not really a big fan of these structures in general, but I do know some tricks to keep them lasting longer, and my selected location isn't very wind-prone.

I was mentally prepared to not get anything made in time before true winter hit here in southern Michigan, but then it took forever to arrive, and I had some time during the holidays to get started, so I went for it while I still had my backhoe mounted.

As often happens, I dove right into things and neglected to get a "before" pic. But the new shed will go behind my tractor here, directly left of my metal carport. Had to yank a couple trees and knew the area sloped downwards here - I was not prepared for how much fill soil I had to excavate and loader over; probably between 25-30 loader buckets worth in total. I have a pit on the backside of a hill in the woods behind my house that I can get into nice sand below the top soil - excellent fill material.

About halfway there:

It kept looking like alllllmost enough, and then taking several more loads. Part of the goal was to raise the floor level above the surrounding area and make sure my driveway/yard run-off doesn't flow into it and keep the ground wet inside.

 

[deezler]

Still not enough fill dirt added, and then it rained a LOT and souped it all up. Almost got wet enough to make me give up on the project. But I didn't.

Finally I had enough loads of soil added to begin shaping things up and make it how I wanted it.

One major drawback of these tent garages is the low door height on the front and back. On the harbor freight website they don't list it! So when they brought the huge heavy box out to my truck, I saw it on the side of the box: just a measly 6.2" of door height clearance. Not enough for my pickup, and nowhere near enough for my tractor ROPS.

So I embarked upon a funky plan to build the cheapest riser foundation that I could: two rows of concrete block. I even bermed up the dirt under these foundations a few more inches as you can see in the pics.

Then I lugged out my plate compactor, which runs like crap now, but she struggled through it. Time for a tune up already.

 

[deezler]

After several more hours of pad construction than I initially expected, it was finally time to start the "foundation". My somewhat wacky plan was a sandwich of: treated lumber, two rows of block, and another treated lumber cap to have the shed poles sit atop and mount to.

One issue: it was too cold to mix concrete. So I am just dry-stacking these blocks. Not very stable, right? So I decided to fill them with sand, and drive rebar down into the native soil below.

First I had to lay out the bottom and top layers of treated 2x6 to drill matching holes for the rebar to pass through.

Getting colder and closer to true winter weather now, but a good carhartt coat and working quickly can keep you warm to well below freezing. One side "foundation" complete:

And the second side complete:

Yes, the walls are a bit woogly. I don't care, I figure they will settle themselves out eventually. It's just for a tent garage to sit atop, after all.

One nice thing about being able to level up my walls together, and get them squared up diagonally upon initial layout for the exact size of the shed kit, was that I didn't have to check anything after that.

 

[deezler]

I had a pile of 21A gravel on hand, and figured I might as well get it in place in the shed before I put anything in it. But my pad compaction job was a bit crap, to be honest. I did not do it in layers upon filling the area, only using my tractor tires for most of it. And the plate compactor struggled to make much impact - everything was spongy and wet still.

So I threw down some scraps of weed-blocker fabric that I had sitting around first.

And with gravel:

WINTER IS COMING!

 

[scootr]

Ground compaction is very important to the stability and longevity of the structure. Soil should be compacted in lifts. Each lift should only be as thick as you can effectively compact to 95%. In your case I see about 18" of fill on the far end. This should be done in 2 or 3 lifts with proper moisture content. The tractor tires can be a effective compaction tool. A bucket of dirt and tire marks on every square inch should suffice. GL

 

[deezler]

I know, scoot. I know. I did run my tractor tires over all of it several times. But we'll see how much more it all settles over time. Probably more than I want, but not enough to make it all fall apart.

 

[deezler]

So then yesterday I had to take the afternoon off work to actually get the tent shed erected and completed, in order to get some things stored inside it before a winter storm of snow/rain/freeze/WIND is hitting right now as I type.

It was kind of a real bear to assemble this thing by my lonesome, not gonna lie. But it went ok to get the poles together, and then I could use my front loader to help pick up half the weight and allow me to position it atop the foundation walls.

A couple things I did to hopefully help lengthen the lifetime of this structure: Added a spare tarp over the midsection of the poles, to effectively serve as a second covering layer. Another flaw with these structures is that the span between the horizontal poles (ridge/peak to side bars) is too wide, so any snow/rain makes the cover sag horribly, and eventually fail. An easy thing to help is just to run a pair of ratchet straps near the middle of this free span - they can be tightened enough to help hold up the cover without distorting the frame.

Pulling the top cover over by myself was also tough, but working the front/rear ends back and forth, and she came over. A lot heavier duty that their smaller 10x17 shed cover.

Then it got dark but I still needed to shuffle my things around to make use of it. It was a lovely calm 35 degree evening to keep working into the night a bit.

I gathered up all my tractor 3-pt and SSQA implements/attachments that I don't need during the winter, and placed them on my 20' car hauler. Then used my SSQA trailer hitch to ease the whole load into the shed! Now the trailer is like a rolling drawer for storage, haha. Worked out pretty slick.

 

[deezler]

So, to tally things up:

12x20 portable garage: $349 (with MI 6% tax and 25% coupon)
Some treated 2x6s: $38 (half new, half were old scraps on hand)
~55 6x8x16 concrete blocks: $90 (had a few on hand already)
Part of a pile of gravel: $140 (I got kinda ripped off on this gravel load)

Not counting spare/re-used screws, chunks of wood, old rebar, etc. I love scrounging together a project with minimal purchases.

Grand total: $627 Dangit! Over-budget! haha, I had not actually totaled anything up until right now.

In any case, this is 12x20 of covered storage (ok more like 11x20' on the inside) for $630, as compared to the 20x21x9' metal carport next to it that was a whopping $3400. BUT, the carport was the price fully installed, and assembled in just 2 hours by the fastest working mexican crew I've ever watched. I'm glad to have both structures.

 

[Rustyiron]

Good job! I like your 2x4 wall stakes on the outside. They may be helpful with some on the inside of each wall also.
I'm wondering about snow shed off of the roof & walls exerting inward pressure.??

 

[deezler]

Thanks, the walls seem pretty sturdy overall even though some of the concrete blocks are loose, haha. Hopefully things settle and tighten them all up eventually.

Yeah the 2x4 stakes on the outside are driven into the ground an extra foot or so, then I used some deck screws to tie everything together. Definitely could use a few more stakes overall, might do eventually, but I was really racing the project along at that point and called it good for now, haha.

We'll see how things look after 4-6" of slop accumulates on the roof tonight, with some 50mph wind gusts.