BiTurbo228's garage build

I'm up to 7 and a bit metres paved!



...out of a total of 23m...



However, that's enough to test its structural integrity :S



Nothing seemed to move or crack immediately at least, which is reassuring. Should be a reasonably good test as the pickup's about 1800kg and we estimate it had about 500kg of pavers in the back of it...

Now that I've got out from over the tree roots I can use a compactor, which has sped things up immeasurably. Took a couple of days off work and managed to get pretty much the whole straight section of the driveway prepped and laid:




I've also managed to procure a load more blocks as they've been doing some building opposite where I work. They'd pulled up a whole section of block paving, and rather than re-using the blocks were going to skip them and buy new ones. Asked if I could have them and they said 'go ahead, knock yourself out mate' so I've pulled 1800 out of the spoil pile.

That's put the idea of paving the whole thing into contention, just need to find 3200 more blocks from somewhere cheaply and we can avoid paying out for gravel and gravel grids!

Man this would be expensive with new materials...

Haha yeah there's been a few days where I've had to lay flat on the floor for a while afterwards

To be fair, I think it's been good exercise. I've got a habit of not doing much strenuous work for a while followed by short, sharp periods of quite heavy work. Definitely a recipe for wrecking your back! Having something a bit more sustained has been useful.

And yeah, I'm amazed at how much all of this would cost if you paid someone to do it/bought all your materials new. I've added up about £15k just in materials (£4k of blocks, £10k in hardcore - mainly the expensive MOT type 3 low fines stuff, £1k in other bits and pieces). That's not including saved labour (though I expect they'd do it a bit more quickly than I did, and pay trade prices).

Yeah I can see the issue! All of this development work rarely adds all that much value to a house TBH so it's invariably money down the drain (if what you're looking for is an investment rather than the thing itself).

Speaking of entertaining ways to blow all your money, I've just got back from a trip to Mauritius* so not a great deal of progress on the driveway. Before I left I did fill in a fair chunk of the hardstanding with the first layer of hardcore though:



Next step is to fill this lot with sand, but unfortunately the pickup is out of action. I have a bit of a love hate relationship with this vehicle. When it's working it gets itself out of the doghouse for a while, but the moment I have to do a job on it I just end up hating it. Part of the issue is that it's really difficult to find good information on it as everything online for 'Ford Ranger' brings up the US car which is different. The 'rest of the world' version is a Mazda B2500 (or BT-50) under the badge, but there's enough differences between them to make that info only semi-reliable. This wouldn't be so annoying if the design of the thing wasn't invariably lazy and/or cheap.

First strike was the headlights (dip and main beams), which stopped working a couple of months ago. All of the wiring diagrams I could find are for the Mazda versions which are different. Bought a workshop manual which doesn't have any wiring diagrams in it. No Haynes available. Ended up finding the issue through dumb luck when plugging and unplugging all of the wire I'd traced in the system, and found a terminal that had fatigued/snapped/corroded. Popped a spade terminal in and fixed!



The person who signed off on having one single power wire for both dip and main beams for both headlights should be shot. One issue while you're cruising on the motorway and you'd be plunged into total darkness.

Latest issue is it overheated and popped the radiator. Radiator was simple enough to replace, but just look where they put the thermostat (which I think seized and caused it to overheat):



What curse word puts a thermostat on the bottom of the engine, wedged up against the dipstick tube so it's a royal pain to get a socket onto the bolt, and just above an invariably rusty crossmember (because of the rubbish rustproofing) that drops flakes of rust into your eyes? I would be slightly less irritated if there wasn't acres of available space in the usual position on the top of the engine...

Oh, and the thermostat I ordered was wrong because none of the online parts-checkers seems to know what parts do and don't fit this vehicle. Ordered another one using the part number on the old one, and then I can finally get on with the thing I'm actually trying to do!

*Interesting place btw. Less from a petrolhead perspective as there didn't seem to be a great deal of car culture out there, but from an ecological and cultural perspective it's fascinating...

Well, I've worked out that I've moved 31 tons of material (including the driveway) to get to this point, which is where it's at as of this evening. All by hand. Don't feel so bad it's taken so long now that I've worked that out




75% of the hardstanding area filled in. Just a smidge more sand to wash into the newly laid limestone chippings. Then it'll be onto levelling sand and pavers. I'll be at 40 tons of material moved by the end of that! Not counting where I've had to move things more than once (i.e. depressingly often!).

To give myself a bit of a break from endless barrowing I've plotted out some of the proposed garage design. As I can't have one big one I've put a fair bit of thought into how to maximise use of two smaller ones.

This is what I've come up with so far:




So, two 4x8m 'big single' garages. These just about sneak under the 30m2 internal floor area threshold for building regulations to apply. Between those will be a 2.8m gap, with a 3m 'corridor' between the two, and a flat roof sheltering a 5m long open ended parking bay. On the other side is another 2.8m gap to another outbuilding we have which will get roofed and be another drive-in car parking space. If I have big 1m eaves that can be 9m long, so I might be able to wedge two of my smaller cars into that (or one bigger car and the motorbike). There's also the option of making another enclosed storage area at the back of that if internal space is at a premium. Then there's a 40cm gap to the existing outbuilding.

This uses pretty much every inch of available space, and lets me wedge in 4 cars with a 3x4m workshop area at the end of each garage, plus the 2.8x3 central area.

Having what are in effect two different garages connected together gave me the idea of having one 'clean' garage for things like painting and engine work, and one 'messy garage' for things like grinding and fabrication. I had real trouble doing jobs that needed a clean environment at my old place as grinder grit got everywhere and it was way too jam-packed with stuff to keep clean easily, so this would be a real luxury.

I also had some ideas for rafter designs and loft storage.



With 38 degrees of roof pitch I can have 1.5m of internal headroom above the ceiling joists (if I inset them into the walls rather than plonk them on top). For the whole of one of the garages, and in the workshop area of the second garage, I'll use that as loft storage.

With 3m joists in the walls and raised ties I can sneak 3.75m of internal headroom, which would future-proof a lift of some variety.

The question at the moment is whether to put the lift in the clean or dirty garage. I'm thinking clean as the dirty garage will probably have an immobile hulk in it for quite a proportion of its time, and a lift would be really handy for general maintenance.

Anyone have any other ideas of things I can bake into the design now?

Fabulous stuff. Amazed at your progress. I was just thinking 31 tonnes = 31,000kg = 1,240 sacks of cement. That’s a phenomenal amount of work.

If you get stuck for parts on the Ranger again, PM me, I have access to that Ford parts system so can look up numbers on the VIN.

Reading this with interest, hopeful that I can rebuild/have my double garage rebuilt this year/next year as it's getting tired. Being away from home for many months has meant family have been clearing out areas I have neglected so suddenly there is cause to do such things

This week, I have been mostly collecting block pavers.



I'm down to only needing 2500 or so out of a total of 8500. At a total cost of £170 so far (plus fuel) I think I'm happy with the fact that they're all slightly different variations of brindle.

I've also started collecting some tiles which is the next big cost that can be readily avoided. It's about 53p per tile new and I need nearly 9000 of them. With this latest batch of 500 reclaimed ones I'm up to 1800ish.



This weekend I also got a good chunk of the hardstanding paving down. Goes fast when all the groundwork is prepped and ready. I'm actually a lot further than this, but finished after dark so didn't get photographic evidence. I'm a little further than the line of leaves you can see here:



Unfortunately, I noticed that the garages are quite out of parallel with the block pavers. Thanks to the gravel drainage gulleys I can account for this at nearly 1cm (3/8") per row, but it'll still be tight to make up the ~40cm (16") of distance to get them parallel and avoid having to cut any blocks lengthways.

Still, it's starting to look good!

Useful to know considering I might have a fair few to cut!