Zee's laboratory

[Zeeflyboy]

Just been browsing through this rather inspirational forum and I saw that there were one or two man caves in the project area.

Given that, I thought I would share more details of my labour of love over the last months. Basically one of my main hobbies is flying FPV and rc models, and I like to design some of my own craft... I even managed by complete luck to get one of them manufactured and sold which is cool

To that end when I moved back to the UK and bought a house here I had no space to do my work and keep my CNC and 3D printer and other tools.

So I really wanted to have a nice man cave in the garden where I could create and play... basic requirements - insulated and heated, about 3x5m give or take, room for a beer fridge and a chill out sofa.

I was looking around at all the things you can buy and they were all either crazy expensive or didn't really float my boat or weren't the right size. The one I ended up using as inspiration was something called the glide pod... but with options at a little under £30,000 + VAT that wasn't going to happen!

I also realised that I was going to need to go a little smaller due to not wanting to dominate my relatively small garden... So I decided to just design and build it all myself. It's a good excuse to buy lots of power tools anyway.

So first things first, I came up with a design. This was the initial design and not a lot changed, just mainly aesthetics around the cladding at the front and I decided to knock 0.5m off the width to preserve my garden - when I laid it out on the ground that 0.5m made quite a big difference to how much it was going to encroach.

 

[Zeeflyboy]

The one who must be obeyed is actually responsible for kicking off this project. She demanded I build the decking out back and so I used that as an excuse for renting a micro digger....

seemed logical to use the digger to start on digging out for the foundations while I had it:

That's a mighty fine hole:

filled with hardcore:

compacted, levelled and build the formers:

 

[Zeeflyboy]

So final bits of preparation before the build could begin - laying the slab!

laid a membrane and some reinforcement:

I calculated nearly 4 tonnes of concrete and I decided that I would rather gouge my eyes out with a rusty spoon than haul and mix that much concrete by myself. I found a company with a volumetric truck that quoted me about £250 so went with that... only downside was that it's too small an amount for a concrete pump and there was no access so all near 4 tons of it had to be wheelbarrowed through the garage. That was tiring!

Covered it all up and let it cook off for a week or so

And then removed all the formers and gave it a couple of coats of liquid damp proof membrane:

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Ordered some treated timber to start building the frame, and I was pleasantly surprised that I managed to build the entire basic structure in about a day and a half.

First side wall built:

I had to get a bit creative with supports to hold it up since I only had one pair of hands:

So after just over a day's work of cutting wood to length and screwing it all together I ended up with this:

 

[Zeeflyboy]

I then put a steel box section across the large span instead of a second piece of wood for extra strength:

Another day's work (in hindsight, get your hands on a nail gun for this. The cramp I had in my arm after hammering these in all day was nasty!)

Then covered in tyvek membrane (a breather membrane that stops water getting in but lets the wood structure breath) and put the roof beams on... The other half got home in time to avoid having to help me lift those big roof beams up, and instead took a photo:

18mm ply for a super strong roof...

 

[Zeeflyboy]

For the roof I decided to go with an EPDM membrane... seemed the most foolproof option and supposed to last 60 years or more.

This wasn't too hard to fit, just be sure you know the process and what you're going to be doing before you start because once you've laid the glue it's too late to be figuring stuff out!

Fitted and a quick sprinkle with a hose to make sure there's no leaks:

in the mean time my window turned up. I ended up custom ordering this as I couldn't find any stock sizes when I was doing the design... cost about £450 and it's double glazed plus thermally broken aluminium frame. Was quite easy to fit, didn't really know what to expect given that've never installed windows or anything before.

So the window installed and roof edges finished and tidied up, and I also made a start on the battens for the rain screen:

Fun fact for if you decide to do one of these, ideally you should have the battens either running vertically, or spaced away from the membrane so that there is room for air to circulate and so that water won't get trapped against the membrane by a horizontal batten.

I would have liked to just use vertical battens as the spacers for the horizontal, but I needed my cladding to line up with the roof and couldn't find any treated battens the right thickness, so I ended up printing my own special spacers out.

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Glad to see you're doing a build log of this Zee.

What sort of RC are you into? I used to be big into it a few years back but have fallen out of touch with what the latest "things" are.

Was mainly helis, but more recently FPV - where you fly using a camera and a real time feed into a pair of goggles as though you are actually in it. If you go on youtube and search for "eurofighter FPV maiden" you'll find my first big model I built.

The little racing drones are a lot of fun, and I designed one called the Vortex which is now sold by immersionRC. Again you fly as though you are inside the craft using live video, but you race against others around these specially designed little courses. Lot of fun.

 

[Zeeflyboy]

So my big triple glazed bifolding doors turned up and my friend that was supposed to help me with them was unfortunately no longer available.

I was really really stupid and decided to fit them by myself... I came SO close to smashing one as it nearly tipped over during fitting (each door came triple glazed and balanced already, so they were about 70kg each. I can't say this enough - don't try and do this yourself, I got lucky!

Anyway, got it all assembled and they worked without binding which was nice... there's not a lot of tolerance on these things so working accurately when building the wood frame is important.

These were the most expensive thing of the whole build (in fact they account for around 1/3rd of the final cost) but I think they were worth it.

 

[Zeeflyboy]

I then trimmed around the doors and the corner pillar with something called alupanel. it's about 3mm thick and made from two thin layers of aluminium with a plastic core...

The pillar I must admit took a second go to get that fold right on the corner. You basically route down the back with a chamfer bit and then fold. The first one I used a 45 degree bit but when I folded it it split on the front side in a couple of places... the second time I used a 60 degree bit to give more room for the fold and that worked a treat.

Now the one part I didn't want to do myself is hook up to the mains... I'm happy doing the basic wiring of sockets etc but there's no way I'm messing around in the consumer box. I had a sparky over to put in the armoured cable and a small breaker unit in the shed.

Dug a big old trench:

Cables going in (smaller cable is a cat6 direct burial cable)

and then the insulation arrived:

 

[Zeeflyboy]

So started insulating...

I think in hindsight I may have gone with high density rockwool between the battens and topped with celotex. Less thermal performance but better sound insulation, cheaper and much easier than cutting all that celotex to shape.

I decided on 75mm between the battens (leaving a 25mm air gap) and then a covering coat of 12mm over the battens to reduce cold bridging. For the Roof I went with 100mm between the battens (which leaves a gap below the plywood for ventilation) and again 12mm under the battens to stop cold bridging.

 

[Zeeflyboy]

So one thing that I struggled with was figuring out how to keep the vapour barrier intact around sockets etc..

In america its easy to find air tight boxes, but they don't really exist over here.

I built a small vacuum former a while ago so I decided to print out some plugs for that and make my own boxes

And this is how they get installed:

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Got busy cladding in western red cedar... another fairly expensive part of the build but given it determines the entire look of the thing I didn't want to cheap out here.

I love the colour of fresh red cedar so I treated with a UV protecting oil by Osmo - should stop it from silvering too much.

I got a bit creative with a router to make my own corner joints - I didn't like the commercial designs I've seen which just cover the corners with a square edge

And eventually got the cladding finished. I also decided to replace the soffit material I had used with alupanel along the roof line - gave a much cleaner and sharper finish, much happier with the roof edge like that.

And fitted my colour coded guttering... ooooh yeah, bet you didn't know gutters could be sexy.

 

[Zeeflyboy]

I'm pretty sure I've stumbled across that Eurofighter video before! Awesome and detailed build, but the FPV with HUD is the icing on the cake. All my RC was pre-FPV, all outside. Used to own a load of helicopters; Avant Aurora, Mikado Logo 600/500/400/14, Trex 600N/E/500/450/250, but they were all either smashed to bits or sold. I was only ever "ok" with helicopters, but used to compete in fixed wing internationally until I gave up about 6 years ago.

Got a mate who is big into FPV racing, I'm tempted to start soon too!

Edit: Sorry, derailing your thread!

I'm only ok with helis too lol. I can manage a little inverted and basic tricks but that's about it... Impressive that you used to compete, fixed wing or not!

I need to get out and fly a bit more - to much time spent building stuff recently.

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Cheers guys, glad you like it!

looking good. what size is it? Im planning on building a man cave out the back but its been delayed with news of more tiny feet coming.

total exterior dimensions are about 3.0m x 4.8m

How did you bolt the structure to the concrete slab?

I used a few concrete bolts through the bottom of the frames directly into the concrete... pretty cool, you just drill a pilot hole and then smash them in with an impact driver.

Wow that looks amazing, does the roof slope at all or are my eyes deceiving me? Awesome work on the vacuum former, very neat.

Cheers, yeah the roof has a run off towards the back to make sure the rain all goes flowing off the back into the gutter. If you look carefully at some of the pictures from above, you can see the roof is level with the edges at the front, and an inch or two lower at the back (most visible in the pics on the back left corner)

I suspect its the different terminology that is throwing you, I found dozens on places like Amazon - however you probably saved a ton of money doing it that way - IP66, etc. rated boxes are ridiculously expensive for what they are.

Ah maybe... I spent quite a long time trying to find something suitable and then just decided it was easier to make my own

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Plasterboard all up (thankfully I managed to get a chum to help with the roof panels, would have been very difficult otherwise!)

My little helper:

And a quick fill

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Lots of sanding and finishing later, painted up with first coats:

Then some token floor insulation and OSB

Then underlay and flooring:

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Next up I designed the worktops/desk to get a feel for it:

And got started:

et voila!

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Cheers guys, haven't finished yet though! Will continue to update until it's all done

Wow! Looks fantastic, very nicely done.

Out of interest compared to the £30k+ prices you were looking at, what do you think the total cost of this will come to?

Also the flooring looks great, can you link me to what it is please?

It's hard to say for sure as I prefer denial to accurate invoice keeping... I would estimate around 10k though all in including electrician etc. The big lump of that was the ridiculous 3.3k triple glazed bifolds.

The flooring was this stuff:

https://www.saleflooringdirect.co.u...Matt-Sonoma-Oak-by-Falquon_305_139_780_1.html

Ah right - the advice id gotten before was to drill a hole in the concrete and use epoxy, set a piece of threaded bar into the epoxy and then you can use a washer and nut to secure the frame to the slab.

But your way seems easier

Hah whatever works man. There is nothing wrong with using chemical fixings but thunderbolts are quick an easy, and it ain't going anywhere!

http://www.unifix.co.uk/thunderbolt

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Haha, no - not at all.... just a DIY'er.

This is the first time I've ever tried to build something like this, was a fun experience and I learned a lot. Glad you like it

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Many thanks Analog - very kind.

Militant - unfortunately life has been busy of late, work has ramped up out of nowhere, the missus has needed carting around to go car shopping and I've had some family duties to attend to.

On top of that I've also been a little lazy and enjoying the new PC more than I should while there is still work to be done!

Hoping to get a chance to do some meaningful progress next week, there isn't a huge amount to do really so hopefully I'll certainly have it finished off in the next few weeks.