Home Improvement Today?

That the thing, Someone who knows what they're doing.

I have a home improvement contractor coming this week. It may not be his specialty but I'll see what he says.

 

Be careful with that

 

Amtrol Well-X-Trol is a premium brand many pump companies install, might be only sold through plumbing supply houses.
I have one from Lowe's -- naturally the old one went on a Saturday afternoon.
Probably anything US made is fine.

https://www.amtrol.com/product/well-x-trol-well-tanks/

You folks do things different not having to worry about freezing.
Is there any kind of roof or enclosure to protect the pump or it everything out in the open?

 

You might try to find someone who only does masonry work, that is his specialty.

 

What could go wrong?

 

The person who built the porch was a masonry contractor, but neatness isn't his forte.

Here not to many contractors take pride in their work anymore.

 

Bingo

 

Exactly...

 

It's all about the mighty dollars.

My neighbor clean up his porch after it was built. It took him the whole weekend to do but it came out great. Now that he's older I don't think he want to clean up another porch. He rather be rocking on the porch with a beer in his hand.

 

I forget the technical name of that pebble product, but my parents had that on the kitchen floor of the first house I grew up in. I remember my mom always complaining about what a pain it was to clean, especially if you dropped jam or whatever. Mom made lots of homemade jam. My knees always had the distinct impression of those pebbles from crawling around too. Looks much better on a porch.

 

It's out in the open right now, been casually looking for something like a plastic shed to build around it but have yet to make it a priority with all the catching up on things I've been doing otherwise.

 

Broke ground on a father-son project this weekend. My dad and I have always wanted a shop to do woodworking and welding. I’ve got this older barn behind my house that looks pretty prime for renovation. It was used as a horse stable at one point — there’s bite marks in some of the studs inside. The ground is crush rock, and the walls are built on a stem-wall foundation. There’s a breezeway the previous owner built on a similar stem-wall but it’s not attached to the main foundation.




The idea is to extend the footprint of the barn to the outer breezeway wall the previous owner built (so box it in), take down the existing wall under the main pitch of the roof, and then pour concrete floors.

Here’s the game plan:

1. Dig trenches to extend the stem wall foundation from the breezeway wall to the main barn foundation
2. Form, splice, and pour new stem walls to attach the new outer wall to the main structure
3. Splice and frame walls to frame our new outer dimension.
4. Retrofit rafters to transfer the load from the existing main wall to the newer outer wall.
5. Take down existing main wall so we have one big 22 x 40 box.
6. Hire a rando to grade the shop floors with 2” of gravel.
7. Pour 11 yards of concrete to finish the floor.

Today we made some good progress on 1 and bought all the materials for 2. So first we had to temp a support beam on the front of the barn since, for some reason, the previous owner just put the support beam on a concrete box… that won’t play nicely with our new foundation, so we basically moved the support beam outside of the dig area and yeeted the concrete box out of the way. Then we dug down and turned the corner for a 90° footing. The wall on the front of the new shop will only be 2 feet wide to match the one on the other side (see first photo how the wall is only 2’ on that side). The rest of that span on the front will be a 16’ wide opening / door. We’ll use a glue lam as our new header to span that new gap later when we do the framing.


On the back side we just had to dig straight and make sure our surveying was done right so we have a fairly level wall when I start forming. We didn’t have the hot saw today so there was some concrete on the existing main wall we had to beat up.


This week I’ll form off of the existing structures where I can using concrete lags and a long ass level. I have a bunch of stakes to hold my 2x6’s tight as well. I haven’t done a lot of form work but this one looks pretty straightforward as far as splicing goes. When we pour next weekend we’ll put some rebar in the existing foundation so our new footings have some hold on them.

Anyway, super exciting. It’ll be pretty slow going, but the hope is to have the floors in this year. Then I’ll do rough electrical in the winter while I put new siding up and whatnot.

 

awesome

your shop build will be quicker than mine haha

 

Know that feeling!

 

That looks like the first time I did it, how long were you stuck?

Haven't had any issues from the first or this time.

Yet...

 

I was probably under water for about 5 minutes.
Had to remove spark plugs and crank to remove water from cylinders. Replaced air filter, spark plugs and cabin air filter. Only gremlin I have is the airbag light is on in the dash now. I think the module under the passenger seat got wet....

 

Ouch, that's actually deeper than I got I only had maybe two inches of water the first time, and it wasn't quite that bad from yesterday.

I also already had my snorkel the first time so my truck ran the whole time I was stuck which was maybe 5-10 minutes.

 

I like this look, but I don't know how slippery it will get once wet.

 

DANG! That's a great deal!

 

I always hold my door open and creep into any water crossings and if it starts to touch the cab I back out. I'm not looking to chase gremlins after water intrusion. If it was an emergency, maybe.