It's been a couple weeks and have been making progress on the shop build. Took a week off last week to get at it. Even had a friend take off the week as well to give me a hand. Unfortunately there have been several issues with the building manufacturer. Pieces missing, pieces mislabeled, pieces made incorrectly. It's just bee really frustrating. Kind of makes me wonder why I didn't go with stick built, but anyway.
Last update I had a few of the column set. Next bit, and probably the most dangerous part was raising the rafters. I'm a cheap b*st*rd and really didn't want to pay a couple grand for a telehandler rental. Most of the pieces aren't too heavy individually. The heaviest assemblies were about 400-450lbs. We used the same contraption I built to lift the column for the rafters. Started by lifting one end of the rafter up and putting a single bolt in connecting it to the column
The readjust the crane to the other end to lift the center part of the rafter. Holding it in place we then put the remaining bolt in connecting it to the column, and put a wood support under it to stabilize it.
Repeat the process for the opposite side, align the two rafters and bolt them up at the peak. The crane contraption was a bit too short in the end and I ended up having to extend it by several feet. In the below photo, we had a bit of a gap between the two rafter and used some ratchet straps to pull stuff into place.
And more of the same for the next set of columns. In this picture, you can see the cables braces between the middle two columns. These cables ended up being one of the huge pains. They have threaded eye bolts on each side so you can tension them to stiffen up the center bay. Everything else kind of keys off of that. Problem way, the cable were just barely long enough to install. You can install them one of two ways. Put the girt (horizontal piece) in first, and then install the cables. Problem with this method, is with how short the cables are, you needed to use herculean effort to get the eye bolt through the column far enough to get the washer and nut on. Or, you install the cable first, and then put the girt in. Same issue except now you're having to pry the columns apart to get the girts in. We double checked all the measurements, anchor bolts were in the right place, column were plumb and it was just a huge amount of effort to get the part assembled. And extra inch in the length of those cable would have made all the difference.
Go the two center rafters up and bolted together. Next is to install the purlins. Here you can see we have cables braces in the ceiling as well. In the roof, there are two sets (two Xs) on each side of the rafters. The problem with the cables wasn't consistent. You can see the sets of cables near the peak are quite loose. But you can see how tight the cables sets closer to the outside are. Those are already installed with as little thread engagement as possible, they cannot be made looser. You can see the strap running from the rafter down to the tractor. We're trying to separate the rafters far enough to get the bolts for the purlins in but fighting against the tension of the cables.
After fighting with the one side so much, we ended up wedging in some sistered 2x6s to spread the rafter enough so that we weren't fighting to put every single purlin in. We only had this problem on the center section as it's the only part that has the cable braces.
From there, it's a bit of a repeat for the front section. Lift rafters, bolt it up, put in purlins. Here we ran into another issue. A girt the spans from the front column to the adjacent one was missing from the shipment. It didn't really delay us too badly. We temporarily braced that column, got the rafters in place and were able to install the purlins which stabilized that front bay enough.
Front and back walls were then put in. The back wall is a bit lighter construction than the middle part. There's no openings, and it doesn't have to support as much weight as one of the middle parts does, so it was quite a bit easier to put in. Still had to use my 'crane' to put in the rafters, but most of it bolted together quite easily. Front wall was dead simple, all those pieces were able to be put in by hand. Looking at is from the front, there's going to be one single overhead on the left, a double overhead door in the middle and then a man on on the right. The jambs for the small overhead door are now installed too as is one of the jambs for the man door. Just waiting on to get the man door itself before I install the second jamb so I'm sure to get the rough opening size right. The below is the 'mostly completed structure.
At that point I was still missing the girt and when installing the back purlins, we were missing three pieces of angle bracket to connect them to the rafter. There's 5 purlins on per section on each side of the peak, so I should have had 10 brackets, 5 of each and then do have different part number in the BOM. Except they only sent me 7. And all 7 were for the same side. I ended up having to mirror and drill new holes in order to install 2 of them on one side. You can see here what I mean. The left bracket is fine. The right brackets you can see have extra holes in them now. Since I was already waiting on the missing girt, I figured I'd get them to send the remaining angle brackets as well rather than just going to local metal supplier and getting the appropriate angle iron.
I figured that since they had different part numbers, whoever made them just made a simple mistake when drilling them and no big deal. Didn't feel that I had to mention to the supplier that their parts were wrong. when I finally did receive the girt and the brackets yesterday, low and behold, the replacement were also wrong. Here's me holding up one of the replacements to show the supplier the issue. anyway, I ended up redrilling those too and finally got the remaining purlins and the missing girt installed. so at this point, the frame is complete.
While I was waiting for the missing pieces, I was able to work on getting some of the insulation and siding up. These are R-20, 6" rolls of faced insulation that basically get sandwiched in between the frame and the siding. The 6" is a bit of a pain, because you do have to compress it quite a bit to get the panels screwed in. We did go through a bit of a learning curve in making sure the panels don't sag and end up being misaligned, but we ended up getting it figured out. by thursday last week we were able to get about 2/3rd of one wall done.
Over the course of the weekend, I lost my helper, but still managed to complete the remainder of the left wall and 2/3rds of the right wall by myself. I had to stop on the right wall because of the missing girt, but now that it's in place I can finish that up.
the above is as it stand now. Frame complete. Left wall, 2/3rds of right wall and one panel of the front wall installed. Unfortunately I'm back at work now so progress will slow and there's not much daylight in the evenings. It's dark by 7 pm. Though I'll probably break out the flood lights. This week kind of suck weather-wise too. Its fairly rainy, which kind of prevent one form doing insulation work. But I'd really like to push through so I can get the roof on and get it mostly protected from the elements. But there's a fair bit of trim work too that has to be in place before the roof goes on. And it seems like I'm only going to get my garage doors by the end of December. but can still probably start getting some stuff moved in there before then and figure out some sort of temporary door situation.
Last update I had a few of the column set. Next bit, and probably the most dangerous part was raising the rafters. I'm a cheap b*st*rd and really didn't want to pay a couple grand for a telehandler rental. Most of the pieces aren't too heavy individually. The heaviest assemblies were about 400-450lbs. We used the same contraption I built to lift the column for the rafters. Started by lifting one end of the rafter up and putting a single bolt in connecting it to the column
The readjust the crane to the other end to lift the center part of the rafter. Holding it in place we then put the remaining bolt in connecting it to the column, and put a wood support under it to stabilize it.
Repeat the process for the opposite side, align the two rafters and bolt them up at the peak. The crane contraption was a bit too short in the end and I ended up having to extend it by several feet. In the below photo, we had a bit of a gap between the two rafter and used some ratchet straps to pull stuff into place.
And more of the same for the next set of columns. In this picture, you can see the cables braces between the middle two columns. These cables ended up being one of the huge pains. They have threaded eye bolts on each side so you can tension them to stiffen up the center bay. Everything else kind of keys off of that. Problem way, the cable were just barely long enough to install. You can install them one of two ways. Put the girt (horizontal piece) in first, and then install the cables. Problem with this method, is with how short the cables are, you needed to use herculean effort to get the eye bolt through the column far enough to get the washer and nut on. Or, you install the cable first, and then put the girt in. Same issue except now you're having to pry the columns apart to get the girts in. We double checked all the measurements, anchor bolts were in the right place, column were plumb and it was just a huge amount of effort to get the part assembled. And extra inch in the length of those cable would have made all the difference.
Go the two center rafters up and bolted together. Next is to install the purlins. Here you can see we have cables braces in the ceiling as well. In the roof, there are two sets (two Xs) on each side of the rafters. The problem with the cables wasn't consistent. You can see the sets of cables near the peak are quite loose. But you can see how tight the cables sets closer to the outside are. Those are already installed with as little thread engagement as possible, they cannot be made looser. You can see the strap running from the rafter down to the tractor. We're trying to separate the rafters far enough to get the bolts for the purlins in but fighting against the tension of the cables.
After fighting with the one side so much, we ended up wedging in some sistered 2x6s to spread the rafter enough so that we weren't fighting to put every single purlin in. We only had this problem on the center section as it's the only part that has the cable braces.
From there, it's a bit of a repeat for the front section. Lift rafters, bolt it up, put in purlins. Here we ran into another issue. A girt the spans from the front column to the adjacent one was missing from the shipment. It didn't really delay us too badly. We temporarily braced that column, got the rafters in place and were able to install the purlins which stabilized that front bay enough.
Front and back walls were then put in. The back wall is a bit lighter construction than the middle part. There's no openings, and it doesn't have to support as much weight as one of the middle parts does, so it was quite a bit easier to put in. Still had to use my 'crane' to put in the rafters, but most of it bolted together quite easily. Front wall was dead simple, all those pieces were able to be put in by hand. Looking at is from the front, there's going to be one single overhead on the left, a double overhead door in the middle and then a man on on the right. The jambs for the small overhead door are now installed too as is one of the jambs for the man door. Just waiting on to get the man door itself before I install the second jamb so I'm sure to get the rough opening size right. The below is the 'mostly completed structure.
At that point I was still missing the girt and when installing the back purlins, we were missing three pieces of angle bracket to connect them to the rafter. There's 5 purlins on per section on each side of the peak, so I should have had 10 brackets, 5 of each and then do have different part number in the BOM. Except they only sent me 7. And all 7 were for the same side. I ended up having to mirror and drill new holes in order to install 2 of them on one side. You can see here what I mean. The left bracket is fine. The right brackets you can see have extra holes in them now. Since I was already waiting on the missing girt, I figured I'd get them to send the remaining angle brackets as well rather than just going to local metal supplier and getting the appropriate angle iron.
I figured that since they had different part numbers, whoever made them just made a simple mistake when drilling them and no big deal. Didn't feel that I had to mention to the supplier that their parts were wrong. when I finally did receive the girt and the brackets yesterday, low and behold, the replacement were also wrong. Here's me holding up one of the replacements to show the supplier the issue. anyway, I ended up redrilling those too and finally got the remaining purlins and the missing girt installed. so at this point, the frame is complete.
While I was waiting for the missing pieces, I was able to work on getting some of the insulation and siding up. These are R-20, 6" rolls of faced insulation that basically get sandwiched in between the frame and the siding. The 6" is a bit of a pain, because you do have to compress it quite a bit to get the panels screwed in. We did go through a bit of a learning curve in making sure the panels don't sag and end up being misaligned, but we ended up getting it figured out. by thursday last week we were able to get about 2/3rd of one wall done.
Over the course of the weekend, I lost my helper, but still managed to complete the remainder of the left wall and 2/3rds of the right wall by myself. I had to stop on the right wall because of the missing girt, but now that it's in place I can finish that up.
the above is as it stand now. Frame complete. Left wall, 2/3rds of right wall and one panel of the front wall installed. Unfortunately I'm back at work now so progress will slow and there's not much daylight in the evenings. It's dark by 7 pm. Though I'll probably break out the flood lights. This week kind of suck weather-wise too. Its fairly rainy, which kind of prevent one form doing insulation work. But I'd really like to push through so I can get the roof on and get it mostly protected from the elements. But there's a fair bit of trim work too that has to be in place before the roof goes on. And it seems like I'm only going to get my garage doors by the end of December. but can still probably start getting some stuff moved in there before then and figure out some sort of temporary door situation.
