lhendri1, Author at Canadian Pursuits

January 17, 2020October 9, 2023

Cement pouring

Before you can pour cement you will want to pressurize the in floor tubing so it won’t get crushed when people or the wheelbarrows go over it. I had read different suggestions, but we ended up just presurizing with water. It was easy to do using our tap water at about 60 PSI. The other benefit was if you had a puncture anywhere while working it would be quite obvious so you could fix it right away before the cement sets. Lots of sites suggest air, but of course you would need to watch the gauge, and you would have to try and find it.

We started in the far corner from the cement truck and worked out way back. We had a semi truck with 10 meters and a 4″ pad most of the way, although the downslop wall was a bit more. The cement had fibre added to help strengthen it and keep cracking down. It wasn’t a lot extra from Burnco and we did end up with a beautiful pad that stood up really well.

Pouring was pretty straight forward. We had a laser level so my nephew checked the height as we went with our pour. We made the pad level rather than sloped to the alley to make building the walls easier (not on a slope). I think if I did it again I would have taken the time to pour the walls seperately and level and made the pad slope out.

It took a fair amount of work for a couple hours, but wasn’t too bad with help!

One area we had a problem with was the downslope wall started to really bow out with about a foot of conrete. We hadn’t added bracing at an angle which was an oversight. We certainly should have, but added it before we got too far, although the wall was never perfectly straight.

January 16, 2020October 9, 2023

Cement Finishing

Like any cement job you need to float the cement to start, then finish it a couple of times. In our case we were a bit late in the final finsh coat and had to add some water in a few spots to get it glass like smooth – which we did!

Once we had it smoothed out we sprayed on a sealer to keep the rain out and help protect it.

January 15, 2020October 9, 2023

Framing day

The garage was a straight forward design that we bought from Totem (now Rona). We used 2×6 walls for extra insulation, and 2′ spaced rafters. It all arrived on site by a picker who dropped it by the pad. Pretty much everthing we needed was there, and with some helpers we got all the walls framed and up in a day along with the rafters.

We ran into some problems getting our wall around the conduit to the house (for electrical) and the heating pipes. We ended up building that wall in 2 sections and tying them together.

I was lucky to have lots of help with the promise of beer and steak.

Time to put up the rafters and sheet the roof. We ended up doing a lot of this on Sunday.

Now we had to sheet it. Wasn’t too bad with a 3 12 slope.

January 14, 2020October 9, 2023

Finished Framing

Looks good all finished framing and sheeting.

January 13, 2020October 9, 2023

Tyvek and shingled

After framing and adding all the windows and doors I shingled it by myself. It wasn’t too bad of a job just picking away, but that was it for that summer.

The next year I put Tyvek all the way around as a moisture and wind barrier and sealed it with Tuck tape. Looks good I would say!

After this I had a scratch coat put on for stucco. It ended up staying that way for years with just a coat of paint as I ended up siding the house with Hardie board siding and wasn’t going to bother ripping the stucco off to match.

January 12, 2020October 9, 2023

The inside

I haven’t found any inside pictures handy, but essentially we put R20 Rockwool insulation in the walls, and R40 in the ceiling. I used Rockwool as I knew it would moist and didn’t want mold.

Once the vapour barrier was on I sheeting the inside with 3/8 OSB and sprayed everything white.

OSB isn’t much more expensive than drywall, is super easy to work with and just used a sheeting stapler to put it on. Certainly looks good in a garage or shop, and has the major advantage of being much more durable if you run into a wall with something you don’t immediately get a hole. It also means mounting things is really easy. I would never build a shop with drywall again.

January 11, 2020October 9, 2023

Heating

The easiest would be just to use a boiler, hook it up to your heating manifold and away you go. I put a ball valve on the input side of each pipe run so I could control flow, which worked fine.

I had an extra water heater that was still good, so I chose to use a water heater and a circulating pump on a thermostat. That way I could keep the water tank at a higher temp to give a surge of heat when needed. The trick with a water tank is you have to make sure it isn’t going to be pressurized or it will explode. You need a surge tank. This is likely not legal in many jurisdictions so be sure to check.

I didn’t use glycol in my system as it was already full of water. I likely should have, and had plans to, but sold it before I got around to it. The risk was only if your system stopped in the cold and burst. Certainly I would have done it if I stayed longer, although water does work fine it could have troubles over time.