Building a double garage by ourselves (loadsa pics)

[Iamzod]

Dont know if this will be of interest to anyone but i thought i'd post it anyway.

I know this aint technically car related but as far as i'm concerned the purpose of this garage is to have somewhere to build & store a 3.9-5.0 litre V8 Ford Capri X-Pack, which i will no doubt be posting progress threads about next autumn so i'm sticking it here.

If it's in the wrong place then someone move it please.

Posted a few months back in GD link for a bit of advice have been slowly progressing since then so thought i'd post up of what's been done.

We started off with this -

Started work on the garage last summer during the world cup where we rented a mini JCB & dumper to dig up & remove 17 tons of our garden to make way for a double garage with workspace on the side for my dads Supra & my Capri.

Once it was all dug out the weather quickly turned naff making the area a mass of thick sludgy clay which put an end to the job for 2006.

Restarted this summer in april/may i think when we had 2 abnormally hot weeks which dried everything out & made the ground workable again. so we re-started on it.

Following sorting the ground out we had to put down 17 tons of crush which had to be poured at the front of the house by an 8 wheel tipper then moved bit by bit into place at the site of the garage 120 feet away by wheelbarrow which took 2 full days, my dad loved that weekend! .

Following that we put all the shuttering into place which is where i posted my last thread on this for some advice on laying down the rebar.

This was followed a week later by the damp proof membrane which i'm told is to prevent damp from coming up from underneath into the concrete as well as starting to put the rebar into position.

Not long after this point the weather took a turn for the worse, this was around the time of all the floods in the summer so we ended up buying a pump as the dug out area was sometimes collecting 9 - 10 inches of water around the edges in under a day due to all the rain, this stopped things for another month or so as you cant really concrete in nearly a foot of standing water.

More below....

 

[Iamzod]

Once the weather started to pick up we had to start concreting, we split the whole area into 9 seperate bays and bought a cement mixer off e-bay as well as hiring a 2nd one, this was probably the worst part of the job as we started to get some really bad rain again & ended up buying a gazebo to concrete under. This wasnt particularly fun as each bay was taking about 5 - 8 hours to concrete depending on which bit was being done, corners taking longest as they were about a foot deep round the edge, this was all being done by mixing our own bags of sand & cement.

At this point i went away for 2 weeks in Malia which was a nice change as i think the lowest temperature was about 26 degrees one night & highest i think was in the mid to high 40's one lunch time.

Came back to a large delivery of concrete blocks sat on the drive which took another 3 days to move by wheelbarrow 3 at a time which my dad had to do all by himself due to me dislocating my shoulder on holiday & not being able to lift a bag of sugar comfortably never mind a wheelbarrow full of concrete.

The concrete base was also completely finished.

 

[Iamzod]

Got the builders in over the last week & things are now starting to take shape, 3 courses of concrete blocks left to go on the walls as well as the thicker sections being put in at certain points & we should be ready to start roofing the place in a few weeks & get the doors fitted on the front & side.

Then comes the nightmare of knocking the old garage in front of it down thats covered in Ivy 1m thick in some parts and is made of asbestos, and also wiring the place up, insulating it & getting it heated sorting drainage, rendering the outside, extending the driveway.

The camera on my Nokia N95 makes the wall look wonky for some reason in one of the pics but it aint in real life, dont know why it looks like that.

 

[Iamzod]

Fair few posts there, guess i'll answer a few of the questions

How big is the garage? Did you need to get planning permission for it? Reason I ask is I live in a corner house and want to build a 5m x 6m garage in my back garden. The entrance to the garage will be from the road that runs along the side of the house but the garage will be set back around 5m so there's an area in front of the garage to park cars and the council can't/won't tell me 1 way or the other if I need planning permission for it, really bloody frustrating to be honest.

The internal dimensions are 7.2m wide by 6.4m long, and we didnt need planning permission, however we have been in touch with the council about it & paid them to send an engineer out at varying stages & make sure everything is ok with regards to building regulations etc.

How will you get access to the garage from the street, from the pics cant really see any access.

Theres gonna be an 80 feet or so long driveway running down the side of the house right through where the old asbestos garage is currently sat.

How much has all this cost so far?

We worked this out last night, in total including all materials, paying the builders to put the whole wall up & coucil guy to come check everything, having all the soil removed & renting or buying all the equipment & tools, basically everything right down to the pack of screws holding the bits of copper pipe to the shuttering.

It currently comes to £3120.

nice thread , how did you dislocate your shoulder? lol

Just popped out whilst swimming in the pool, didn't help that i was in the 3m deep end at the time so had to try & swim out to the edge with my arm out of the socket, that kinda hurt, as did putting it back in myself beside the pool.

I'm a bit accident prone to be honest, managed to slip in the shower after getting back one morning at about 5am after the 4th night there & caught my elbow on one of the taps on the way down, split my elbow open down to what looked like the bone so ended up having stitches, never seen so much blood in my life!

Please don't say you're sticking a rover in the Capri...please!

My plan was originally to put a Rover V8 in there that had been stroked and maybe bored out to a 4.2 - 4.8, with a weber 4 barrel carb, modified heads, cam, rhoads lifters, etc.

Was doing this as it was going to be an easy option as i know its a relatively easy swap as i can get my hands on a modified sump, engine mounts manifolds & all the other stuff to get it in there along with a 5 Speed LT77 SD1 gearbox.

I'm not too sure now though, i've been looking at Ford 302's a bit over the last couple of months & it's even crossed my mind to put something bigger in there, but i dont really want it to be any more nose heavy than it already is as a 2.8i.

Not planning on making a start till the back end of next year though so theres plenty of tme for me to look into it & decide what to do.

 

[Iamzod]

Bit of an update, got 3 more courses on the walls, getting the last of the brickwork done tuesday afternoon and then we can start building the roof trusses during the week & hopefully start putting them in place next weekend.

Following this we are going to fit the main door and then sort the rest of the roof afterwards.

These walls now seem a lot higher than i'd imagined.

Standard red mk3 IIRC.

Yep, more or less standard MK3 at the moment, the head has to come off this winter though once it's back home & in the garage, having a metal head gasket fitted & i think i've talked him into getting a bit more power out of it whilst it's in bits.