9m x 7.5m (30 x 20?) with 3m x 9m awning - Metric Shop Poject

[kiwi_steve]

Yep, metric

This is it, almost 100m2 of shed... I was somewhat disappointed... I think I was expecting a fleet of trucks to be dropping off large parts for days.

The site (after knocking down a bit of fence that was in my way):

Then I borrowed a digger from a friend and made a big mess. I often work on the 'how hard can it be' principle... which gets me to a point where I am forced to either admit defeat or learn new skills and git'er done... I hate to admit defeat, so now I can drive a digger and not make too much of a mess. It took a while though :D

Then I though, concrete? How hard can that be? (see above)...

Ask me why I was mowing the reinforcing mesh

Turns out concrete is hard (literally and figuratively). I had the help of a couple of very good friends who have every right to never speak to me again after roping them in to that... Wow - I have a lot of respect for concrete guys... they make it look easy.

More to come... I'm about half way through the build at this point... I'll add some more photos later.

Cheers, Steve

 

[denis]

metric system FTW :D

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You should have gone at least twice as big ;)

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I had the help of a couple of very good friends who have every right to never speak to me again after roping them in to that...

This... or : they will come all the time to borrow shop space to work on their own shit

 

[kiwi_steve]

metric system FTW :D

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You should have gone at least twice as big ;)

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This... or : they will come all the time to borrow shop space to work on their own shit

Probably that

So here is the back wall. As per the instructions, I laid it out and assembled it, then stood it in place. This is where things started to go wrong...

Once all bolted together with all the girts screwed in place I could not get it to stand flat on the pad, it wanted to teeter totter on the middle leg. I'm not a builder, nor a mathematician... but it seemed like the middle leg was too long and probably needed cut to length. Only the instructions have a sentence in big bold capital letters right at the start that says, "DON"T CUT ANYTHING, ITS ALL MANUFACTURED EXACTLY TO LENGTH IN THE FACTORY" - so I didn't. It was also christmas, so there was nobody at the office to call and ask why this perfectly designed kitset didn't work. the pad was flat, the wall was assembled correctly as per the plans (the F$%king plans... that look like a 1980's photocopy of a 1960's Gestetner copy).

I stared at this for days - I dared not cut anything, because... well, the plans. But I knew it wouldn't work - so I went around in circles and eventually removed all the centre part so I could keep going, with the hope that I could magically re-insert them later and they would somehow fit

At this point I got hold of someone who suggested I should pull it all down and start again, only this time I should cut some things! I was relieved and INCREDIBLY pissed at the same time... they cancelled each other out and I just went numb. Then pulled it all down. Then walked away for a few days and refused to even look at it.

Turns out that the whole mm-perfect design is based on a few factory assumptions about things that don't actually work in the real world. Those corner braces are not particularly well bent, so the brackets that screw to them to mount the top row of girts sit too far in, pushing the width of the wall out at the top and thereby flattening the roof slightly, which in turn pulls down the apex and makes the middle leg seem too long. I hope that made sense - the TL;DR is that you have to cut stuff, despite the BIG BOLD WARNING not to. Once I knew that little gem of information things went more (ish) smoothly and over a week of evenings with the help of a mate to hoist stuff up I got all the framework in place (with the exception of the stuff that needs cutting, I still couldn't quite bring myself to do that even though I knew it needed doing).

Ok, more to come... suffice to say that by this point I was pretty much over steel buildings. Gimme wood anyday

 

[kiwi_steve]

This was the problem, the brackets at the top of the portal legs. The top row of girts is about 5mm (3/16" ish I think?) shorter to allow for the thickness of the bracket steel... only the brackets are not 90 degrees bent, and they sit way out from the edge of the portal leg anyway. They need to be at least 11-12mm shorter to fit here. In hindsight this is pretty obvious to me - but at the time it did my head in.

 

[Pt_Ranger_v8]

and then.....?

 

[SomeGuy]

The trick with metal like this is to assemble everything loose, get it all roughly in place and bolted down to the concrete...then tighten it up. All those little tolerances will be forced into place :)

 

[kiwi_steve]

and then.....?

And then I did some more... see below :)

The trick with metal like this is to assemble everything loose, get it all roughly in place and bolted down to the concrete...then tighten it up. All those little tolerances will be forced into place :)

I think that works for small tolerances... unfortunately these tolerances were designed by a computer ... so the angle grinder is what fixed it. Because there is also a note in the instructions saying NOT to use angle grinders... so I figure at this point the way to get this shed together is to do the exact opposite of what the instructions say.

So a few weekends back (actually, now I think of it... it was QUITE a few, since we've had 7-odd weeks of lockdown since then) another good friend came over with his scissor lift. He's a git'er done dynamo and we (I think 'he' more than 'we' - he's awesome) got a metric shit-tonne of the roof purlins boxed up** and in place among other little jobs done or at least started. Its probably worth noting that you need friends or some pretty cool tools to do a shed like this yourself. The walls on this one are 3 meters, and the roof apex is 4 - beyond safe reach from my ladder or scaffolding. The scissor lift was a godsend. And two people at least are needed in a lot of places - standing up the end walls took 3 because they're quite floppy.

**Actually boxing up girts, purlins and portals is one of the time and back-killers of doing steel sheds. They come as a massive pile of c-section, and lots (in my one, most!) of it needs to be box section, which means fitting two C's together and then using a heap of screws at max. 600 centres (2 feet?) along each side of each one. I set up little mini-production lines, measuring one then making a pile to keep me going for a while... They're self-drilling tek-screws but they are a pain - and there are two types - Philips 'mush heads' on the outside where the wall linings go and hex heads on the inside. The hex-heads are easy to drive (and also easy to overdrive and strip!) but the Philips ones are a pain in the ass by comparison. Almost every box (actually, I think all) have one type on one side and the other type on the opposite side.

So by the end of the day Mark was here helping it was looking like this:

There is a PA door going in the near left corner, and another into the awning in the far right. And a 3.2m x 3.2m roller door going in front. Eventually.

I've gotten the two PA door frames in. I wish I'd asked beforehand, I assumed they would be full size doors, but the bloody frames are about 6'4 high... and I'm somewhere north of that, getting close to 6'5 ( imperial measurement!) So I have pushed the whole frame up a bit from what the plans say, and I'll add a draught-stop or a strip of ply or something to the bottom of the doors if they need it.

And I've also finished the last of the roof framework with the awning side gutter purlins and mounting plates for the awning rafters fixed in place.

And this is as far as I have gotten so far... so the updates will probably slow to a glacial pace from here on out... its going into winter here in NZ so I have about 1 hour of light from when I get home... I'm doing what I can, when I can. I can't wait to be in it though...

The next step is to get the two end wall legs in place (you can see one standing against the ladder and the other lying in front of the pad where it fell while I wasn't looking) and build out that wall... then get the diagonal bracing in. Then a few little tidy ups - like getting the walls flat (they are both bowed slightly so I'll need to slacken some of the bolts in the connectors and use some strops to pull them in a bit).

Once thats done, the walls go on! Thats going to be exciting. Then the roof, then the doors, and then the truck :)

 

[Pt_Ranger_v8]

Damn, that looks like a pain in the ass

Can't' wait to see it when you're done with it though

 

[kiwi_steve]

Well, progress is about stalled and has been for quite some time. Life kinda got in the way, and aside from building out most of the front wall and tidying up some of the other framework the only thing I've really managed to achieve is screwing up the roofline while trying to square up the walls

I've got to say that all these problems with the steel framework have really drained my enthusiasm, but I'm kind of getting to the point where I just want the darned thing done - I've even considered handing in my man card and paying a builder to finish it... but I haven't quite got to that point yet.

I've bought a couple of smaller lever chain blocks to tie across the two inner portals so I can try again to pull things into square - but everything moves everything else so its a royal PITA to get right... and when its close and you crank up all the bolts then let the strops off everything moves again... its an execise in frustration but I'll give it one more go.

The other problem I had was the diagonal bracing - again, the main issue was that I followed the instructions...

The screws in the shoulder bracket (highlighted) just can't be done the way they say, because that bracket is 5mm plate steel, then there is an air gap, then two layers of portal boxing - the screw length means you can barely get any threads in if you pre-drill a hole in the shoulder bracket - but if you don't you just shear the screws apart - if you pilot drill the bracket, then the screw gets hung up because of the air gap and it strips...

So I've got one screw in here and about 6 fails. It was the end of the day, and I was tired and frustrated and just kept trying... I should have stopped and walked away. I rung the company the next day and they said, nope - you'll never get them in that way - you lower them down below the bracket and just screw them to the portal leg lower down. Sigh...

So, all up I haven't really got much done in the last year or so (wow, that sounds bad when I say it like that!)... but I'm hoping to get back into it once the weather clears a little this winter.

Cheers, Steve