In order for the formwork to be as strong as possible while the shotcrete was going up, I had chosen not to make a hole in the rebar cage for the skylights. Instead, we just built the skylight forms above the steel structure. Now that it is too cold to work outside, it is the perfect time to cut the steel out of the openings and remove the skylight forms.
The Video
The Gallery
Hunter and I were mostly working on different skylights. THis is one of the only timelapse pics to catch both of us in the same shot…
Hunter cut away the steel and then unscrewed the wood formwork. We had built these forms from the inside so all the screws were accessible, but we still needed a pry bar to get some things moving. At this point, the majority of the steel is cut away and the 2×4 structure that held up the skylight buck is removed.
Once the wood and steel were removed, there were some spots where the concrete had not made it all the way to the forms. “Shadows” in shotcrete lingo. This one was the worst of them. I ended up packing these gaps full of hydraulic cement.
Some of the sheets would come out whole… Others were a bit more reluctant and I would need to tear them into pieces, either with a jig saw or just with the pry bar. Of course, this is all done while standing on top of a 13 ft ladder.
In one or two areas it was really difficult to get a grinder in to cut the steel, so I used a cutting torch. My son really wanted to practice with it. I couldn’t let him use it up on the ladder, but I let him cut up a piece.
We had not left quite enough room for a standard garage install and had to get creative with our rear garage door. Here is the video…
The Video
Bells and Whistles
The door was from Lowes and came with the S3 winder so I wasn’t too worried about the torsion spring. I got a side mount garage door opener, specifically a Liftmaster 8500, and was really happy with it.
One interesting side thing: The Liftmaster 8500 had a bunch of extra special features, such as a wireless light, programmable control, etc. but the most interesting thing (to me anyway) was the way the sensors worked. Every other garage door I have owned had a sensor so that if you walked past as it was going down, it would stop and open up. This is the sensor that you always “hop over” if you want to sneak out of the garage as the door is going down. How do you improve on such a basic sensor function? When I first installed it, it didn’t seem to be working, but then I realized that the improvement is simply to wait and see if the obstacle is there for more than a moment. If you just walk past, it doesn’t trip it, no special hop-while-ducking required. You need to interrupt the beam for at least half a second to stop the door from coming down. Pretty minor, but it makes a nice difference 😉
Back when we did the shotcrete on the Quonset hut, we bucked out a side door between the garage and the mudroom. Leaving the Quonset intact was important because we did not want to weaken the Quonset structure before adding the wet concrete load. However, the buck keeping the concrete off this section meant we could cut it out and make a doorway without needing a big concrete saw. Well, now with the mudroom roof on, it is time to punch the door thru the side of the Quonset.
This segment also covers putting the lights up on the front of the garage.
The Video
The Gallery
Starting the cut
Trimming off the section down to the floor.
Hunter and I both working to trim and smooth the edges of the steel
