New garage going up - things to remember before the builders start?

[UdderlyOffroad]

Perhaps calling them down lighters is misleading. They are outside light fittings that shine down. I find them much better than the traditional bulkhead lights I have on the shed which shine at you and blind you but don't stop you falling over stuff on the floor. They have 5w screw in led lamps but will take up to 40w I think?

Thanks Al, one for the next place...

Back on topic, looking good Fridge! I might have missed this, but does the new build give you room to open the Ambulance/series doors and work on it?

Matt

[MECCANO]

Will the new door open on the boundary of the pavement?

[FridgeFreezer]

Matt - It does give a fair bit of room, internal is ~3.4m wide so you can swing a door.

Meccano - Yes, the garage goes up to the pavement, minus about a foot for the fence posts etc. and the door will be set behind the pillars so another foot ish, for planning we had to promise to fit a sliding door (roller etc.) that did not in any way swing out and knock pedestrians over.

Mind you, we also had to promise (with pictures) not to build over/into the lamp-post

[ejparrott]

We haven't seen any evidence of the kitchen extension yet...

My coat, why thank you!

[FridgeFreezer]

We haven't seen any evidence of the kitchen extension yet...

I sort of assumed people here wouldn't be that interested, call me daft

[landroversforever]

I sort of assumed people here wouldn't be that interested, call me daft

Of course we are!! Kitchen = bacon sarnies and tea/coffee!

[Bowie69]

Did you design it with a serving hatch in one of the windows facing the shed?

[FridgeFreezer]

The work that's gone into the kitchen I might demand gourmet bacon sarnies and a direct tea pipeline!

[MECCANO]

Sounds like your planners are alot nicer than ours. We have to have a car length in front of any door, gate, so you don't block the highway.

Looks good!

[FridgeFreezer]

Meccano - you could try offering to fit a remote garage door opener so you're not "waiting on the highway" (a phrase that cropped up along the way).

[FridgeFreezer]

Time for a bit of an update... picking up where I left off:

Floor screed dried out, mostly, but because the "old" half's concrete floor doesn't have DPC under it, moisture seeps up through it. The old garage was always a bit damp, partly due to leaking roof & blocked gutter and partly because of this. You can see the pattern in the floor where moisture is seeping up:

That means some sort of sealer / floor paint has gone from being a bit of a luxury to actually quite useful to prevent all the tools and stuff rusting away.

After a lot of shopping around I discovered a few things about floor paint:

- You want 2-pack epoxy

- Most floor paint is designed to be applied to surgically clean, smooth, dry concrete that must also be ~3-4 MONTHS old

- Pukka industrial floor paint can be insanely expensive, I thought I'd found suitable stuff but it would've run into hundreds of pounds to cover my floor (~35m²)

I ended up buying from Ask Coatings, 12.5 litres of their water-based 2-pack as it will act as a moisture barrier (their other product is pond liner paint, which the tech guy told me was basically the same paint in slightly different consistency).

1st coat they recommended I dilute the paint a bit so it flows better on the rough / porous surface, giving the 2nd coat a key.

Prep-wise I had to sweep all the dust off the new concrete, this took bl**dy ages as the builders had tramped tonnes of mud & concrete dust all over it. If I had to do it again I'd pressure wash the whole floor and probably prime/seal it with SBR or similar to save backache from sweeping and also from stray patches of debris from popping up later (bits that are too well stuck to come off with sweeping but are pulled up by a roller covered in sticky paint, more below).

As it is, I didn't have the time to do that and wait for it to dry so ended up giving it several coats of sweeping.

All swept, 1st coat goes on - I was using a roller, if I had to do it again I'd seriously look at some sort of spray application as it's hard work. The paint is quite sticky (even when thinned) so will pull any even very slighly loose bits off the floor & stick to the roller, and you have to be very firm with the roller to get a good coat on the concrete floor.

I ended up using 7.5L of paint for this 1st coat, it took a LOT more than expected/suggested to cover the fresh concrete (the screed was much better), if I did it again I'd allow even more for the 1st coat so I could slap it down a bit thicker.

Also immediately I started painting, everything in the local area decided to rush out for a look:

You have to wait ~4 hours for it to go tacky before applying the 2nd coat. This means you have to levitate over the still-very-tacky floor - and this paint is STICKY, there is no way you're walking across it without bu&&ering it or your floor or your shoes up. My solution - spiky shoes!

Worked brilliantly, although slightly shorter screws would've been a bit less precarious, and knocking the tips of the screws off with a grinder would avoid making little pinpricks in the screed (doesn't really notice now).

2nd coat all done, used much less paint (5L - but that was all that was left) although again probably could've used ~10-20% more and slapped it on a bit thicker.

Next day - all dry:

Looks kinda pink in this photo, it's more like a sort of red oxide colour. You can see near the front (bottom right) on the new bare concrete it went a bit matt, doesn't seem to affect the coating.

Stay tuned...

[FridgeFreezer]

Next part - the door.

Part of the planning stipulations was that the door must not swing out over the pavement, which meant it had to be some sort of vertical jobby, that means roller shutter or sectional. There are sideways-rolling doors too but I can't trust myself to keep that much floor & wall space clear of junk, at least it can't pile up on the ceiling.

After doing a bit of looking round I decided that sectional doors are the way to go for a few reasons:

- They don't roll up into a big roll right above the opening, most of them need less than 150mm headroom.

- Most are dual-skinned ~40mm thick insulated sandwich construction, good for insulation and good for security

- They have a rubber seal all round that makes them very weather-tight (also noise-tight for late night workshopping)

Headroom was a major factor, unless your door is quite small (width AND height) roller shutters need 300mm+ headroom to roll up into, and above a certain size 400mm+. What with the ambulance being quite tall and the garage needing to be kept at a sensible height, I didn't have that much space to play with.

There doesn't seem to be any major price penalty for one type of door over another, once you're into larger-than-standard doors (especially in odd sizes) you're looking at £1000+ for anything. Standard single or double garage sized doors in standard white, brown or green are a lot cheaper as everyone keeps those in stock and they can sell them all day long.

There are only a few major manufacturers of garage doors, and TBH they are all much of a muchness - there's only so many ways to skin that cat and only so wrong you can get it. Most of them seem to be made in Germany whoever you choose. I ended up with Cartek / Techentrup as they had an offer on.

I called a few garage door companies, got a few quotes, and came to the conclusion I was going to fit the thing myself as they were adding £1000-£2000 on top of what you can buy a door for online. I also came to the conclusion that they are in the same league as double-glazing salesmen for being utter c**ts. Most of them only wanted to sell me what they had in stock (always white or brown) by their favourite manufacturer (and sometimes even trying to sell me a different type of door that wouldn't even work) and told all sorts of lies about why I shouldn't order what I actually wanted. According to some of them, ordering a non-standard colour pretty much means they get the retarded work-experience kid to dust it over with a Halfords rattle can in the car park during lunch break

I got so fed up of one particular salescock telling me this (he phoned multiple times over a couple of weeks constantly trying to bullsh*t me into buying a door he clearly had in stock & was desperate to shift) I actually phoned Techentrup direct and they told me that was balls and that all colours from their range are done exactly the same, only exception would be if you ordered something totally off-the-books like hot pink when they'd have to take a white door & spray it, but even then it'd be done by the same guy on the production line and would come with the same guarantee.

In the end I ordered from Garage Doors Online as a friend had used them and was pretty happy, and the price was right. The timing coincided with Teckentrup / Cartek having a special offer for doors in their extended colour range (I.E. not white/brown/green) for the same price as normal ones, which saved me a couple of hundred quid if memory serves. As headroom is critical I opted for the cut-to-measure option to ensure the door went right up and away behind the lintel rather than protruding down by ~50mm. The special colour + made-to-measure meant a 4-6 week lead time which sucks.

I did also splash the extra for an electric opener, which could be considered a luxury but is actually recommended on anything bigger than a standard single door as the amount of door you're trying to lift soon adds up, even with the balance springs. It also means no external handles or locks, which feels a bit more secure (I realise nothing stops the determined).

After a loooong wait, it finally arrived:

Having a test of the side rails, I'm glad I got made-to-measure and I'm VERY glad I measured five or six times before finally placing the order:

I should point out at this point that I decided to have a go at fitting this door single-handed and see how far I got. The instructions recommend two people, and it certainly would be much easier with two people. Or 1 person and a fork-lift or similar. Anyway, I pretty quickly realised I was going to need a little assistance, so I nipped to screwfix and bought a couple of these telescopic holder-uppers and a gouple of deep clamps (deep enough to go round the brick pillar & hold the uprights in place). The telescopic pole things paid for themselves many times over, I'd say if you're doing this on your own you really want two (or even more) of these. Some sort of sturdy ratchet strap or hoist to a ceiling joist would also be damned handy, or a fork lift.

Anyway, I screwed the frame together and stuck it up:

Yeah, you'll also need a ladder at least as tall as the door you're fitting, there's plenty to be done at ceiling-height.

The instructions are pretty good, they do suffer from being translated from German and the pictures not being as clear as they could be (special-sized doors complicate some of the measurements too), they're not quite as idiot proof as Ikea so you do need to pay attention & think about stuff a bit.

The side frames need to be square & level, then you need to mark & drill a load of holes and bolt them to the wall, chunky fixings:

Then you assemble the top runners which contain the f'ckoff big springs that tension the door to make it liftable by puny humans, plus the steel cables and pulleys that lift it. The steel cables need to be kept in order, their mission in life is to misbehave by twisting round each other, jumping out of the tracks, and of course stabbing you with pointy ends.

You put one bolt in either side of the top runners, attach to the frame each side, then lift the back end up to pivot the whole lot into place. Another victory for telescopic pole thingies. The frame is heavy as it contains a lot of big springs, but not very rigid, so this was a bit of a game that would've been a lot easier with two people on two ladders.

Oh yes, bizarrely the manual assumes your ceiling is concrete and that you can anchor the brackets for the rails at the precise place they stamped a hole in the rails if your ceiling is NOT concrete you will have to do this, attach a plank to the joists so the brackets can screw to the plank. By a stroke of luck, one bracket did actually line up with a joist. You also put two brackets horizontally (drilled into the wall) to hold it left-right. I'm not entirely sure they do much once the others are in place, they may be better swapped round so they help suspend it from the ceiling.

Once it was all lined up I also did this, no point having a foot of bracket poking down doing nothing:

This is quite a jump in time but not much to say, basically you plop the bottom bit of door into the gap, hook a runner into the rail, screw the runner to the door section, lather, rinse, repeat:

This would've been much less dangerous with two people, the last two sections were somewhat stressful to lift in balancing on a step ladder, but I'm a skinny weakling and I managed it OK so it should give hope to others. A few carefully placed quick-clamps meant that I could pick the section up & drop it in place without it falling out and braining me, until you get the runners screwed on there's nothing to keep the section from coming out backwards (the frame stops it falling out into the road).

Now comes the hard part, lifting the door without the aid of the spring tensioners. You have no hope whatsoever of doing this single-handed. Each section is liftable by a person, but four or five of them is out of the question. Extending pole things to the rescue again, although they seemed unhappy with the load until the first panel or two had rolled into the track and the load lightened a bit:

Having a 3rd pole or something to use as a prop would be nice here so you can drop one out, move it down to the next panel height and start again (they only lift so far before you have to extend the bottom section). Also because the door is flippin' heavy and the poles were about at their limit.

Anyway, you lift the door ~90% open, attach the cables for the spring tensioner (which are under minimal tension at that lift) and then life gets much easier opening/closing.

Now for the swanky stuff - the electric opener.

First you install the track for it. The manual says you should first attach the electric head to the end of this, but the head bit weighs quite a lot and would not enjoy being dropped so I left it off. The end nearest the opening has a bracket with an unnecessarily cheap bit of design:

I splashed out and put a 2nd nut on there form my personal stash. That's just how I roll.

Didn't take any photos of the rest of the fitting but it's very simple - attach the rail to the ceiling, attach the motor to one end, clip the little arm to the carriage & the top panel of the door, and plug it all in. 1st time you have to do a quick setup thing where you manually run the motor to the "open" position and back to the "closed" position so the head unit knows the limits. I also had to increase the closing torque setting so it pushed the thing firmly shut.

Having done the Homer Simpson "bed goes up, bed goes down" routine a few times I then did the final adjustment to set the panels against the seal, here you can see the lower panel has been snugged up (no light getting round the edges) and the upper panel is yet to be done:

Moment of truth...

Aaaaaah yes:

It's tight, but it does fit!

Here's the seal round the edge, gives you a warm feeling:

Not pictured: I later ran a bead of silicone between the frame & the bricks to cap it all off.

I also added a bracket to hold the electric opener head to the ceiling as they only supply two clamps for the track and expect the opener to just sort of hang off the end, which seems like a large unnecessary load on the end of the track.

Tools list:

- Big clamps

- Extendy pole holder-upper whatsits

- Tall ladder (ceiling height)

- Step ladder

- Hammer drill

- Tape measure & marker pen

- 10 + 13mm ratchet w/extension

- Spirit level, mine happens to have a magnetic bottom and this was very handy.

You might also want/need:

Selection of screws, nuts, bolts, washers for attaching bits and some planks, especially if your ceiling is not concrete. The brackets are designed for their big 8mm screw-bolt things with a washer under the head, so using other screws you will need penny washers or similar.

Something to make a shim under the uprights if your floor is not perfectly level.

A few assorted lumps of wood/metal for general bodgery / shimming etc.

Time taken: Saturday morning to Sunday evening

Would be a lot quicker with two people, if you started early & hit it hard you should get it done in a day I reckon. I slowed down massively every time something had to be lifted as I had to run round balancing and propping and be up & down ladders, with two people on two ladders it would've been minutes rather than most of an hour.

Now the fun begins - getting the tools out of storage and setting the place up.

[Lewis]

Excellent read, very informative, thanks for taking the time

[landroversforever]

Are you going to take the old door out now you have the new one in?

[JeffR]

If that was my garage, the red stuff on the floor would be O+...

[steve200TDi]

Are you going to take the old door out now you have the new one in?

Yes, you can buy it if you want!

http://forums.lr4x4.com/index.php?showtopic=94133#entry816752

[Anderzander]

If that was my garage, the red stuff on the floor would be O+...

Lol

Lol

[elbekko]

So the moral of the story is, you want a forklift?

[Bowie69]

...or a house with a larger garage to start with

[dangerous doug]

Nice job

[FridgeFreezer]

So the moral of the story is, you want a forklift?

It's worse than that, I've already got one (well, a hydraulic pallet stacker I got as scrap from a mate) but it's 50 miles away at the back of the old shed blocked in by all the junk that piled up when we moved house and an immobile 109, plus it's frickin' heavy and would need a low-ramped trailer to transport - basically way too much hassle compared to nipping round the corner and spending £50 at screwfix on clamps and extendy poles.

TBH I may well sell it when I eventually extract it, it's really handy round the workshop but my place is just too small for it, a folding engine crane would be way more sensible.

[Retroanaconda]

Looking good.

I suspect you already covered this earlier in the thread, but are you going to do away with the abutments/returns for the old door mid-way down the building?

[FridgeFreezer]

I suspect you already covered this earlier in the thread, but are you going to do away with the abutments/returns for the old door mid-way down the building?

I think once the old door + frame is gone it'll be usable, we can't remove them entirely as you've got to have pillars every so often to keep the walls up but we could cut them back to only 1 brick deep. Would be a fair bit of work though! For now I'm going to see how it goes, plenty of other stuff to be getting on with.

[CwazyWabbit]

You want to find a place that hires these out Mr Freezer

[Anderzander]

Could you use the old door opening to hold an rsj, as a sort of gantry, that would take a block and tackle ?