Joel's garage build / organization

[frijolee]

Impressive work as always,  Did you consider renting a scissor lift?  I hate going up and down a ladder a hundred times a day

I didn't.  I don't know if I could have found one locally...  I would have needed it for quite a while.  As it was, I had that damn ladder straddling all kinds of heavy stuff on the floor including my metal carts.  Definitely would be easier in a shop before it was loaded.

Anyways, it's done now.  Results:

Before:




After:




It was a PITA but I'm glad I fought for the staggering of lights...  And having the extreme lights in the corners...  And the low profile fixtures.  Having some down the aisles works really well for fighting shadows and 4k color is rad in a shop.  In a house I like 3k better, but shops are mean to be bright...  All in all not a bad way to use 512 watts (32w per fixture).  That's still only 1/3 the power of a decent hair dryer.

And my oddball angled/side firing lights?  Here are both the opposite sides in the "dark".  Plenty acceptable for just grabbing something on the wrong side.






Pretty stoked all in all.
-Joel

[freeskier7791]

I see those t8 fixtures you have would not have been ideal at all.  I have the 2 bulb T8 fixtures in my garage and they are all low profiile as well.  I really like how the 4k looks, definitely doing that with my replacement bulbs. 


Do they not have sunbelt rentals or the like on your Island?

[Cobranut]

Looks great Joel, and very efficient.

I have 12 of the 8' double fluorescent high output lights in my shop.  They do a good job of lighting the place up, but use 1,760 watts when all on.

Normally not too bad, but my wife went in there one time when I was on the road, and forgot to turn off the lights.
I found them about 3 or 4 weeks later when I got home.  Added about $100 to the electric bill that month. 

[frijolee]

Do they not have sunbelt rentals or the like on your Island?

We do but it's all the way down in Hilo so about 1:15 hr drive each way.  I need to scope out the local rental place and see what they have.  I have some concrete work to do at some point so I need to lay hands on a baby mixer.

...my wife went in there one time when I was on the road, and forgot to turn off the lights.
I found them about 3 or 4 weeks later when I got home.  Added about $100 to the electric bill that month. 

We had been in this house about three weeks when the water department called us up and said.  "We just read your water meter and it looks like you used 125,000 gallons last month.  That doesn't look right so we think you have a leak."  It worked out to a $850 water bill.  On the upside, wait, they called us?  Dude, you'd never get that kinda service in SoCal.  They even told my wife where to find the form to apply for a one time credit if you can prove you solved the leak. 

It turned out to be a failed tee compression fitting a foot and half down about 2' under the edge of the sidewalk in the backyard.  The grass was a little soupy there but I though it was just rain runoff.  I was able to dig it up ok but then of course it turned into a massive mud pit.  Replacing the fitting involved tightening the replacement part left handed at max extension with my cheek rammed into the sidewalk.  Yay for home ownership!  It was a party...  or kinda turned into one when the wife and I opened a big bottle of wine to aid the aching shoulder.   
 
My left chicken wing apparently doesn't like force applied at max extension for long periods of time.  I have some scar tissue in there from a motorcycle down 15 years ago.

[Cobranut]

That is pretty good service from your utility.

I have two rental houses that my water system supplies.
I have 2 wells interconnected, and built a system to alternate the pumps each cycle.

With all the underground piping, we've had a occasional leak.
The last one was under the edge of my driveway.  The pipe ran more or less parallel to the drive, but when I had the paving done it ended up about a foot underneath.
When they started digging to find the pipe, they dug out under the driveway before I told them to just dig each way and find where the pipe emerged, then put in a new section.
Unfortunately, the driveway sagged and cracked, and had to be repaired a few months later. 
You'd think an excavator operator would think about that before digging there. 

[frijolee]

One piece I tried to screw up by wiring too late at night was a momentary daisy chaining power for the lift to the ceiling outlets for a cord reel.  Black to black, white to white, green to green, with some extra wire grounding the box right?  Whoops.  The lift is 220v the cord is 110v.  If I was going to do that I’d need a dedicated neutral that wasn’t hot for the 220v.   

Anyways, there’s no way I’m able to run another wire in this particular conduit so I end up daisy chaining to the next closest power, my lights.  The LEDs only draw 0.27A a piece and I have wire sized for 20A breakers so I can spare 15A for the cord.  It’ll only be on when this lights are on but I’m probably not using the cord unless I’m working on the mechanic side anyways.

I did get to be a little creative in mounting a beam to support the cord real.  Packaging got a little interesting.




Oh and when you can’t find the right cover for the box you already have, that’s already mounted.  Buy a blank and mill it. 




Yes this was a waste of time, but dammit if waiting on the post office doesn’t get old some time.




Done.

[digitalsolo]

You need a 3D printer, Joel. 

[frijolee]

You need a 3D printer, Joel. 

I know it.  Appreciate you turning me onto Creality a while back.  I've been debating strongly between the Ender 5 Pro and the Ender 5 Plus.  I even sent them a note inquiring whether they were going to release a pro edition of the 5 plus since I like the big build volume, but I want the better motherboard and a filament out sensor..  (Answer:no)

However the just-announced Ender 6 looks like it might be the sweet spot for me.  Biggest thing that can still fit on the desk where this would go.  Core XY for higher speed.  Semi enclosed option for ABS and higher temp filaments.

https://m.all3dp.com/1/creality-ender-6-review-3d-printer-specs/

-Joel

[digitalsolo]

That looks like a pretty solid piece for the (probable) price.    Chambers are nice, but easy to make yourself, too, of course.

[frijolee]

While all the wiring was going down (took several weeks) I was sourcing other stuff to setup the space.  The big splurge was on a used 2 post lift.  It’s a Mohawk system 1A, late 90s vintage.

Mohawk is an interesting company in that they approach lift design quite a bit differently that most companies.  Rather than use a cross brace in compression up high with cables handeling load equalization, Mohawk just runs hydraulic lines to equalize.   The uprights themselves are beef cake and use something more like forklift carriages with large roller bearings instead of UHMW blocks.

The two companies I’d been researching otherwise were Bendpak and Challenger.  Looking at their 10k lifts.  Bendpak runs a few hundred more but comes with larger cables and sheaves.  All these companies make comparisons that try to put themselves in the best light.  Here’s Mohawk’s:

https://mohawklifts.com/library/brochures/Mohawk-vs-Competition-8x8_singles.pdf

I thought I was going to have to wrangle the uprights with an engine hoist and a buddy, but then a friend come through with a baby forklift and made the process a hell of a lot easier.




Went back and forth on lift placement for a while.  1350 square feet seems like a lot, until it’s not.  Thankfully a friend from the Jeep world (and local contractor) volunteered up a baby forklift and impact drill.   Much debate on placement vs. concrete seams and such went down. 

Had some WAD (wood aided design) instead of my usual CAD.




Final test fit with two vehicles in place.




Home Depot had ¾ Hilti wedge anchors but they were just a little long vs. my actual floor thickness.  No matter.  I have a lathe.  An hour or so later and I had 16x properly fitting anchors.




The exposed raw steel ends may or may not have been painted with my wife’s clear nail polish. 




Maybe not super obvious but the lift points at about a 30 degree angle out the door of the shop.  You have same clearance to the door as you do the lift itself.



-Joel

[frijolee]

Now some debate...

The lift purchase and trans-po went down pretty fast and variation of choice sucks in Hawaii so I didn't want to wait to order the "Wej-It" branded anchors that Mohawk recommends.  The Wej-It anchors recommended come at 5".  I cut my Hilti anchors down from 5.5" to 4 3/4" based on minimum embedment depth as published by Hilti (3 1/4").

Here's the rub.  I know this shop has had a lift before (possibly two given the cut off anchors I found).  The concrete is in great shape with little to no cracking, nice cut lines etc.  However, the slab is 4" thick instead of the minimum 4.5" Mohawk recommends in the service manual I found online...  Bendpak--or maybe Challenger can't remember--recommends 4.25" FYI.   I broke through on a couple holes so I know the 4" info I got from the gent who built the shop is legit.  Further, even though Hilti's minimum embedment depth 3 1/4, they still recommend total slab thickness of 1.3x embedment which would be 4.22" so again I'm marginal...  (https://www.hilti.com/medias/sys_master/documents/h06/9176315265054/Technical-information-ASSET-DOC-LOC-3009635.pdf). 

There's a big piece of me that's ready to say, "F-It, none of my vehicles are anywhere close to 9,000 lbs.  I know manufacturers build in large factors of safety."  On the other, I might be violating some code I'm not aware of and I we do get earthquakes out here which would get exciting under a lift.

After I had this all mounted and shimmed to be dead vertical, I'm still thinking about my damn slab, so I started doing some further research before I finish the install.  If I'm going to proceed at risk, I at least want to do so with my eyes open.  This isn't the kind of dirty laundry (AKA marginally aggressive call) I'd typically air on the internet, but I figured some folks must have looked at this with similar questions.  I also figure if I kill myself because my lift collapsed the insurance company might discover the marginal install regardless.  In my digging, I've now found this 2012 document from Mohawk:

https://mohawklifts.com/library/specs/Slab_Requirements.pdf

This one has another major difference from my mid 90s manual.  The owner's manual doesn't talk about rebar except in the section that talks about retrofitting a slab (IE if you need a new pour...)  The slab requirements slab above does.  Again per prior owner, I believe my slab is mesh instead of rebar.  The slab requirements doc notes that no anchor should be within 6 inches of an edge or seam and that posts should be in a common slab and not straddling expansion joints.  I think I'm okay here as my closest anchors ended up about 7.5" to cut seams.  However, I am assuming cut seams don't count as expansion joints, but if they were (or the resulting crack counts) now I have a 3rd issue.  Finally, Mohawk also has a disclaimer on seismic activity.  Given I've already been under my land cruiser in one, that has me second guessing my going in approach.

One piece I want to redo regardless, is that to shim the uprights to vertical I used some strips of SS in varying thicknesses.  I found some chatter here (a gent with notably more issues than mine) that talks about grouting uprights to shim. 

https://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=306274&showall=1

Anyone done this or have links handy?  I've found folks who make purpose built shims (https://www.carliftparts.com/product/leveling-shims-2-post-4-post-surface-mount-auto-lifts-30-shim-kit-installation-2/) but no specific brands of grout or such which seems like the smarter approach to me.  Note the garage journal link above is long but it's part of what has me questioning--even as painful as it might be--whether I should be cutting my floor and pouring a dedicated slab. 

Summary:
-Nice, well seasoned 4" slab (but shy of 4.5 recommended)
-Heaviest vehicle planned ~5-6k lbs on  a lift rated for 9k.
-Mesh not rebar
-Possibility of earthquake.
-Improvement can be made to shimming (probably doing this either way).
-Shortened anchors right at minimum embedment.  All carried rated torque when tightening.

What would you do?  Call it good?  Make the huge effort to dot every I cross every T?  Find a kit to check concrete strength (vs the 4ksi required?)  Thoughts and opinions appreciated.  I've never done a lift before so I'm learning as I go.

-Joel

[wickedrx7]

I used those same shims (https://www.carliftparts.com/product/leveling-shims-2-post-4-post-surface-mount-auto-lifts-30-shim-kit-installation-2/) and didn't grout, It has been fine after about 6 months.  My slab definitely isn't in perfect condition but it does measure 4.5", maybe touch more.  I have rechecked anchors to make sure they haven't loosened up and also inspect the floors for cracks regularly.  My thought process was very similar to yours, I won't have more than 6K lbs on the lift and I am sure there is a lot of service factor built into the design.  A lot of their requirements are based on legal liability.... notice how it is 4 1/4"?  most slabs in residential are around 4"?

The guy I bought my lift form had it in a 3.5" slab for many years without issues (He actually showed me the thickness).   

As for earthquakes... If shit starts shacking, get the hell out from under the car.  The good news is you can run out instead of trying to scoot out if you were under a cay on jack stands... Which probably makes it safer?

But judging how you do things, nothing anyone says is going to change your mind.  If you are questioning it, you are going to redo it eventually for peace of mind....

[Cobranut]

Personally, Joel, it sounds like you'll never have a problem, but you have to do what makes you comfortable. 

My Magnum 10K lift uses cables for equalization, and I do feel the top beam takes much of the torque off the base plates.
Since I had picked my lift before pouring the floor, I incorporated two spots, about 3' by 3', that I increased the slab thickness to 6", even though my lift is rated to go on a standard 4" slab.

[frijolee]

Wicked,

All valid points.  I guess sometimes a sounding board is really helpful in making up my mind and getting comfortable with a decision.  I reached out to the original owner to see if he remembers the strength he spec'ed the concrete too.  Hilti provides pullout info at various strengths/ depths of embedment (it's in the spec doc I linked) so I'm actually debating whether I can setup some calcs with loads and moments and try to figure out how much of a factor of safety is on this stuff.  If it's a nice  healthy number then maybe I'm good to stay on the path I was on.

Cobra,

Thanks fella.  Given they planned a shop up front I'm kinda miffed they didn't do a 6" pour, it's what: +8 yards of concrete?  Compared to what I'm thinking about doing now, that would have been pretty damn cheap.

Joel

[cholmes]

Honestly Joel, given that the anchors torqued to spec, I think I'd keep it installed as is, regularly retorque the anchors and check for new cracks, and done. Get new cracks or anchors won't hold torque, deal with it then.

I also live in earthquake country, and I make sure that any car I leave on my lift overnight, I lower it down until it barely clears the floor. That way if a quake happens, not so much mass moving up high to overstress the anchors, and if it falls off, it can't go far. I got a little lax on doing this, then we had a decent quake, at night, a couple weeks ago! Didn't have anything on the lift, but reminded me what to do.