It is indeed a bit of a beast.

In better economic times it would have been high time for a classic tractor =>



The concrete tiles weigh about 35 each - there's 19 of those buggers (~650kg) providing an anchor for the hand winch - the friction of the stump on the block paving required some counter-acting help from a trolley jack to stop the anchor from being dragged towards the stump...

...if only I'd finished the Land Rover. If only I'd won the lottery. If only...

...oh **** it - it'll come good in the end - take me forever - but it'll come good in the end

I love your optimism and perseverance.

Col

It would be no fun if it was too easy.

Keep going!

(Still only vaguely related to Land Rovers)

Workshop update =>

Having hacked and shredded and dug out loads of organic matter I managed to remember to fit in the drains for the gutters before I started to raise the ground level!



For raising the ground level I've used a special type of sand that the Dutch call "Woudzand". This translates directly to forest sand which to the average English person I'm sure means diddly squat. The first time I saw "the Dutch" using this stuff I was on a train leaving Utrecht where they were building embankments and flyovers for the trains (this was years ago now). At the time I thought - haven't they read the bible here? Don't build on shifting sands you effing numpties...

...anyway having now seen the stuff up close (and being convinced that it'll work) I can see why this stuff is the dog's doo daahs. It feels like it is closer to being a granulated clay rather than a sand. Once compacted it is pretty water resistant (although total saturation would start to get a bit tricky). So a bit of water management will be needed - but hey I understand I'm in the right country for that.

After shifting about 100 cubic meters of woudzand (and compacting as I went) =>



I built an edge to a tray for holding (railway) ballast in place.

########

A bit of a design "aside"

I'm on the edge of an earthquake zone here. It isn't San Andreas fault type earthquakes round 'ere - low lever(er) stuff (Max Richter Scale so far about 3 - but not that bad where I am) caused by extracting too much gas out of the ground (apparently / allegedly / depends who you speak to / bit of a sore point / best not mention it too much!). Anyway I thought a conventional (reinforced steel) concrete structure on top of raised ground in the event of an earthquake might prove to be a bit of a pain in the arse if it slides off or tilts at an awkward angle. So I reckoned I needed to come up with a plan; that whilst in the event of an earthquake which would definitely be a pain in the arse; I reckoned something a little bit like a shipping container that you can jack up and re-level would be ideal...

...also having looked at the cost of concrete structures and thinking about residual end of life material values I kind of thought concrete isn't a great deal even though most people think it is "cheap"...

...getting even one ISO / shipping container on site here would be silly expensive as a mega crane would be needed to lift it over houses and roads would have to be closed so I've decided to build my own steel structure equivalent of a shipping container instead.

The basic design is simple

100 cubic meters of woudzand (about 150 tons)
16 cubic meters of ballast (about 28 tons)
41 railway sleepers (about 80kg each)
IPE steel beams and lots of box section

Biggest welding project I've ever done!

#########

Membranes used under and on top of the woudzand so hopefully I won't be boring you with woes about weeds growing through my workshop (!)



Ready for the railway sleepers (not here yet)



Got to go and try and get a good deal on the steel now.

To be continued.

Workshop update:-





This is going to be the biggest welding project so far (even worse than that pesky S2a I've got!)

#########

Boring aside mild steel vs wood

The down side to making stud walls from steel box sections will certainly be the amount of welding I'll be doing as well as figuring out a way of fixing sheet materials (such as plywood or OSB) to the frame - however the upside will certainly be strength. There is also a noticeable cost benefit.

(I could possibly have gotten a better deal in a different part of the country where there's a bit more competition - but even so)

100 X 50 X 3mm mild steel seam welded box section cost me 5 euros (ex VAT) per meter - similar sized soft wood is about the same price here

100 X 100 X 3mm mild steel seam welded box section cost me 6.75 euros (ex VAT) per meter - no flipping way that would be under 10 euros a meter

I really wanted to build an oak framed wattle and daub building (still do) but for a 9 meter X 7.5 meter floor area the material costs were mental.

So all in all I'm happy to have chosen steel for building a frame structure at the moment - not sure if you should ask me in a few weeks after I've been burning my way through meters of 6013 welding rods!

Slow going but - hey - it is full on hibernation time!



Whilst I did my best to get the tray of gravel to be as level as possible there's only so much you can do with a 2 meter long spirit level on uneven railway sleepers. With the rolled steel joists (RSJs) in position and welded to form a stiff grid small adjustments were made (with afor mentioned 2 meter spirit level on the "straighter" RSJs. (This is my expected post earth quake solution) - Jack up under RSJ - lift sleeper into position and hold with ratchet straps...



...fix sleeper to RSJ with M12 wood bolts and washers,,,



...impact driver needed to get the wood bolts to screw into oak railway sleepers ('ard as nails)...



...adjust height by booting ballast under sleepers (steel toe caps recommended)

Nice going!! I'm thinking (still thinking...) about a steel structure for the carport. Aluminum is too expensive, wood not feasible due to width; I want to span 6x8 meters with no columns. Are you aiming for a clear span? (I hope I've translated that correctly.) The wooden beam needed for that would be at least 300 mm in height (1 feet) if not more to be on the safe side. And that would eat into the height of the roof - I'm not allowed to go higher than 3 meters, a wooden beam would reduce the clearance to 2.7 meters. I'm still wondering how you managed the bestemmingsplan; the biggest challenge is not the construction but the required permits. This is Holland, you even need a permit for a doghouse.

Barge Pilot said:

Nice going!! I'm thinking (still thinking...) about a steel structure for the carport. Aluminum is too expensive, wood not feasible due to width; I want to span 6x8 meters with no columns. Are you aiming for a clear span? (I hope I've translated that correctly.) The wooden beam needed for that would be at least 300 mm in height (1 feet) if not more to be on the safe side. And that would eat into the height of the roof - I'm not allowed to go higher than 3 meters, a wooden beam would reduce the clearance to 2.7 meters. I'm still wondering how you managed the bestemmingsplan; the biggest challenge is not the construction but the required permits. This is Holland, you even need a permit for a doghouse.

Click to expand...

I have a different impression of the rules here in Holland: Sometimes it helps to be a foreigner!

Considering this is a "land of rules" I'm actually surprised at how flexible the "vergunningsvrij bowen" rules are...

...google that phrase and you'll find a PDF that describes what can be done without having to give your local council a horriffic amount of money before anything gets built. (The cost of proper "grown up" planning permission is silly silly money here)

For my situation the size of the plot that I've bought is larger than 1500 square meters so I can build on the maximum allowed "permission free" surface area of 250 square meters (existing house / structures included). {Voor mijn plannen was het perceel grote van groot belang}

The height and position of the garage needs to be a certain distance from the neighbours boundaries - maximum apex height is 5 meters so long as it is far enough away. Not bad eh?

There are other restrictions in the PDF but on the whole that's about it for most structures.

####

For your carport situation I've done a back of a fag packet estimation for you assuming the longest unsupported length is a width of 8 meters...

...please check this yourself! I don't want to be responsible for an epic fail (!) or even worse argy bargy with a Dutch city council (ambtenaren zijn soms erg lastig).



Most flat roofs are rated much like a real floor in a house - meaning it has to support 150kg per square meter. So for a 6X8 meter "tray" maximum equally spread weight = 7200kg - sounds bad eh?

With six 8 meter long "cross pieces" (centre spacing = 1.2 m - about right for a solid structure) across the 6 meter depth you need to support 1200KG per 8 meter long beam.

(Now for the dodgy guess bit!) You can probably get away with a HEA120 cross section beams if you add in some cross joints but would be better off with HEA140. (Zoek term:- draagkracht staal balken)

That's a height / beam depth of 140mm + say 18mm OSB + roofing felt + gravel to stop UV trouble.

You need to have some sort of side shuttering around the edge of this tray you want to build if only to help with rainwater drainage so you need to make sure you don't exceed the maximum height.

If you are building a carport on the side of your house then you are allowed to match the height of the upstairs floor plus an extra amount that I forget - check that PDF again.

I hope this helps and provides a bit of encouragement


(Note you could go for a sloping roof design with something like poly carbonate see through sheeting but look carefully at the snow loading requirements that many many people forget about - they don't half sag!)

Last post of 2019



Pop quiz =>

If you've got a nine meter long base and you've tack welded several vertical pieces by positioning with a spirit level - then you've put a 6 meter length of box section on top that was sold to you as being 6 meters long but you didn't bother measuring it before it went up top - how long would you expect to have to cut the remaining length of box section to span the 9 meter base?



That silver grey tape ain't half strong stuff (!)

minus three metres...

rob_bell said:

minus three metres...

Click to expand...

Very rarely happens when I cut stuff to size but this time to the millimeter I only needed 3000 of them.

Absolute fluke!

January is being kind although when wet it isn't clever to be clambering up steel box sections (!)

The wind is sometimes a bit too strong for welding (stick welding is more resilient to wind but there does come a point where the self made shielding gasses get blown away from where they are meant to be)

Anyone who works in Health and Safety roles / with H+S restrictions look away now - with out decent strong G-clamps it would be even more of a nightmare =>



(Yet again I can not stress the usefulness of a shed full of scraps of crappy wood)



^^^^^^
Just look at the way in which my A-frame ladder fits between the RSJs and the sleepers - almost like I planned it that way (!)



(Guess who really needs to make an effort and find those longer welding leads so he doesn't have to use yet another scrap of wood and yet another g-clamp to improvise a little bird table for the welding machine?)

Quick garage update today =>

Having taken advantage of a mild winter, February has bitten back big time - as for many other parts of Northern Europe we've had destructive wind and silly amounts of rain. This has delayed progress somewhat.

Still I now have a basic steel structure (mostly) painted in Zinga onto which I'll be fixing wood in a bit



Having your life under blue plastic at any time of the year is a pain in the arse but it has been especially irritating over the last few weeks.

Under the many blue tarpaulins I have got roof tiles, OSB, ****ty soft wood, Douglas feather edge cladding and some rolls of sound insulation.

Funny how things go but I'm really quite impressed with my handy welder shelf that I plan to try and sell to NASA - it is really quite a thing - just attach it to something big and upright with your own G-clamp and you don't have to try and strap it to yourself when you climb up ladders (meaning at least when you fall off the ladder you save the welder!)

Looking really good. That's going to be a great work space when it's done.

LincolnSteve said:

Looking really good. That's going to be a great work space when it's done.

Click to expand...

I hope you're right. I'm at the stage where it feels like I've only just started the marathon. In my head things should be going a lot quicker - continued stress getting pee'd off about STILL having to pay rent for vehicle storage (especially when you can't work on them).

So anyway friends and family get lots of the "spot the difference" pictures showing the painfully slow progress so just like in the local paper (as was?) here's a spot the difference picture for you all here on Landyzone =>



If you look closely (and you probably have to!) it is possible to see I've got some horizontal bracing that supports the upper third of the rafters. This has made a nice stiff cage at the top of the apex of the roof. I will probably want to (knowing me and my urge to add weight and extra metal a la Isambard Kingdom Brunel Styleee) add in some cross braces lower down too to stop the walls from wanting to bow outwards once I get the wooden roof structure fitted.

I've gone for "traditional" Dutch ceramic roof tiles for the outer roof surface. I need to check the weight but I think they're likely to come in between 3 to 4 tons - so perhaps all this steel will come in handy after all...


...?

In between the rafters I've fitted some extra thinner box section pieces to help stop the rafters from wanting to twist. These will also help with the next stage when I actually manage to get some effing wood on the steel.

Almost got a roof =>





As you can see I haven't chosen the easy option. I've got a wooden skeleton sitting between the steel rafters. Then I've got a layer of OSB then another wooden skeleton structure into which I've put insulation and then another layer of OSB then a breathable under tile membrane...

Coming on nicely do you need horizontal roof battens to hang the tiles

That is looking great. Hard graft but it will be worth it.

LincolnSteve said:

That is looking great. Hard graft but it will be worth it.

Click to expand...

Thanks chap. I'm looking forward to having a life that's not under blue plastic sheeting.

steve2286w said:

Coming on nicely do you need horizontal roof battens to hang the tiles

Click to expand...

Yep the next stage is to fit horizontal batons on top of the vertical white bits of wood I've fitted on top of the black breathable membrane =>



I need to add in more vertical white bits too so that a kind of ladder structure gets made. This primarily holds the roof tiles in place but also allows you to climb the roof to fit them - flat OSB on a 28 degree slope ain't half slippy (Mum)

Still building stuff and not Land Rovering =>



After fitting the wooden structure and insulation to the roof it turned out to be necessary to add in a bit of bracing (!)



When I was satisfied with the steel it took ages to carry the 1440 roof tiles up top (additional weight of about 3 to 4 tons)



Wooden structure fitted inside the steel - onto which goes an OSB skin...



...then more wooden skeleton structure for external wall insulation...



...breathable membrane - much like on the roof...



...then Douglas Fir cladding...



...phew only three more sides to do.