Tag Archives: bus barn costs

2015/05/12 (T) Dealing with the County

I finally paid a visit this morning to the Oceola Township offices and talked to the assessor and zoning administrator.  I had a satellite image of our property on which I had drawn the proposed barn and driveway.  All they need in order to issue a land use permit is for me to show the size of the building and the setbacks on the image.  I also visited the Livingston County Building Department.  I talked to one of the counter clerks who had me talk to Rick, who is one of the inspectors.  He had just built a large pole barn and used 6×6 posts set in 26″ diameter holes back filled with concrete.  The bottom of the posts need to be at least 48″ below grade to get below the frost line so I will figure on posts four feet longer than my exterior wall height.

Based on my preliminary online research and visits the land use, building and electrical permits are the only other ones I will need in order to put up a bus barn.  The clerk gave me a check sheet of the documentation I will need to provide.  I would have to file some additional paperwork with the County Health Department, but would not need permits from them or from the Drain or Road Commissions.

I drove to the Township offices on Latson Road by way of Hacker and M-59.  Hacker was so bad the last few days due, in part, to heavy rains that it was more pothole than road and many of them were larger and deeper than normal.  The road grader was repairing the road and it was digging deep.  The grader was still working when I returned home but the road was already much better.  The road needs to be rebuilt with a substantial amount of road gravel and with proper drainage ditches along both sides.  Or paved.  Paved would be good.  Linda read something last fall that indicated Oceola and Hartland Townships had agreed to pave Hacker Road from M-59 south to Golf Club.  We checked when we got home this spring but could not find any reference to such a project.

Back at the house I settled in to create a scale drawing of the floor plan of our bus and then draw in the 16″x16″ floor tiles.  I added up the various areas yesterday and added 25% for waste, but that turned out to be a low estimate.  By drawing the tiles I was able to count how many I would actually need.  I called Lynch Carpet in Howell and talked to Clint to get a rough price estimate for the materials.  The 16×16 Armstrong Alterna Luxury Vinyl Tiles are packed 14 to a box and can only be ordered by the box.  We need 190 tiles for the project so we will have to buy 14 boxes (196 tiles).  That turned out to be 50 square feet more than my original estimate, but would leave us with only six full tiles as spares, assuming I do not ruin any during the installation.  Fortunately, the vinyl adhesive and vinyl grout were less expensive than I expected, so even with a freight charge the bottom line was similar to my first estimate.  Using these tiles it will be approximately a $2,000 project.

My layout has the tiles in a standard pattern with the grout lines lined up in two directions, one running parallel to the long axis of the bus and the other perpendicular to that.  I presumed that this would take less tile and require less cutting but after seeing the layout I am not so sure.  I will probably make a second drawing with the tiles turned 45 degrees and see if it makes more efficient use of the tiles.  We plan to use a grout that is very similar in color to the base color of the tiles so the grout lines will tend to blend in rather than standout as a design feature, and perhaps make the orientation of the tiles less important visually.

Later in the afternoon I called Pat at Apex Roofing to let him know our shingle selection.  I left the information in a voice message and Pat called back later to confirm.  We are going to use the Certainteed Max Def Resawn Shake shingle.  We are still thinking about the skylight tubes.  We talked about putting one or two in the living room and possibly one between the kitchen/dining rooms and one in the hallway.  I realized that the air-conditioner would probably be in the way of the one for the kitchen/dining area, so we will not do that one.

Linda made granola today and made baked/stuffed acorn squash for dinner along with an asparagus, carrot, green bean sauté and fresh sweet Bing cherries.  I took care of some e-mail and then we had slices of the Mother’s Day vegan cake.  I called my sister to check on how our grand-niece was doing.  She called me back later and we had a long chat.  Linda and I then watched season 2, Episode 2 of Sherlock.

After Linda fell asleep I was still up (writing) when a noise started and did not stop.  I suspected it was the water sanitizer recharging, as the water softener had recently recharged, but I got up to make sure that’s what it was and not something else like a sump pump that was stuck in the on position.  It was the sanitizer, so I closed the laundry room door to reduce the noise and went back to bed.  I really need to soundproof the laundry room and reprogram the softener and sanitizer to come on at better times.

 

2015/05/08 (F) Bus Barn Trojans

Today was a hodgepodge of activity.

Chuck called mid-morning and we had a long chat about bus barns.  I think our needs would be met nicely by a SteelMaster S-model steel arch building 32 feet wide by 56 feet long with a 19 foot inside center height.  We have been quoted a price of $20,400 for two of these ($10,200 each) delivered to two separate but nearby addresses.  The price does not include end walls, roof vent adapters, or skylight panels.  The site prep is going to be about $10,000.  A 16 ft. wide by 14 ft. high overhead door will be $5,000.  If I can get the concrete work for $10,000 and frame in the end walls, pull the permits, and run the electrical service for another $5,000 we can get this building erected for $40,000 and not spend all summer building it.  That’s a lot of ifs and it’s a lot of money, but we have looked at this a lot of different ways and that appears to be the bottom end in terms of cost.

Chuck likes the idea of 40 ft. wide by 60 ft. long building with that same 19 ft. interior ceiling height.  His logic is that he could put two buses in there, or a bus and a really big trailer, and still have room for workbenches, cabinets, and tools along the outside walls.  True enough, but we do not plan to own two buses simultaneously nor do we plan to rent space in our barn.  Chuck and are also not discussing going in together on a building as we both want to store our buses at our homes where they are convenient to load, unload, and work on.  Besides, I have been quoted $25,000 for that size building.  Although I think it included steel end walls with framed openings for an overhead door and an entrance door on one end, this project is never going to happen at that price unless we win a lottery, and that is unlikely as we rarely buy tickets.

After lunch I finally emptied out the back of my car and re-installed one of the back seats that was out all winter.  I was going to vacuum the interior but my Shop-Vac had very little suction.  An inspection of the filter revealed that it was completely clogged with drywall dust.  I closed up the car and put the Shop-Vac back in the garage where Linda wrote down the model number.

I got out the 8 foot stepladder and carried the three roofing samples up onto the roof.  I laid them out side-by-side so we could compare them in the same light.  Linda also viewed them from the west end of the house and from the rear of the house.  We agreed that the Certainteed Landmark Pro Max Def ReSawn Shake was the one we liked.  Linda made note of that in the quote packet while I loaded the sample boards into my car.

I drove to ABC Supply Co. in New Hudson and returned the roofing samples.  I stopped at the nearby Lowe’s to buy a replacement filter for the Shop-Vac.  I think the sales associate who helped had somewhere else to be and something else to do as it did not seem really interested in helping me find the right filter.  I usually shop at the Lowe’s in Howell and the service there is generally very friendly.  The model number of our Shop-Vac did not come up in either the Lowe’s system or the Shop-Vac website even though we bought it a Lowe’s just two years ago.  Apparently it is no longer made or sold.  After looking at the current Shop-Vacs and the replacement filters I selected an LG wet/dry filter as my best bet.

I-96 west bound was fine until Kensington Road at which point it was stop and go, but mostly stop , so I excited at there and headed north, eventually heading west on Hyne, across Old US-23 and over to Hacker Road.  I don’t know if it was faster, but at least I was moving most of the time at a good speed.  I really dislike sitting in traffic.

Mike Sharpe was scheduled to come over after breakfast tomorrow to see if we could identify the source/cause of the Trojan notifications I have been getting for a while now from my es|et Smart Security 8 program.  It appears that the notifications are being triggered by the copying of a .tmp file associated with the automatic backup of files from one or more of the four WordPress websites I run.  I was doing online research on the infection and was looking for information on the es|et website when I noticed that they had a live chat technical support feature.  I decide to see if they could help me and ended up spending an hour with Eric.  With his helped I think we found and eliminated the at least one instance of the offending file.

Linda made a nice salad for dinner.  Having had something to eat I pursued the Trojan problem back to the next level; the website from which the infected file was being backed up.  The Small Business WordPress theme (in the “smallbiz” folder) was the source of the problem.  I did not recall installing this theme, however, so I am not sure how it got installed into the website.  I checked the other three websites and discovered that this theme was also installed on our personal website/blog.  That probably explains why I was getting two notifications for what appeared to be the same thing.  It took me a while to find an explanation on WordPress.org of how to delete themes.  It was very easy once I saw it, but like many others I could not find the button on my own.  I eliminated the theme from both websites along with others from all four websites that I did not plan to use.  Only time will tell if that has eliminated the problem.

I then dealt with e-mails that I had neglected for the last several days and took another look at the SLAARC GoDaddy account.  It was almost midnight by the time I got to bed.