[gobigorange189]

thats awesome news!!

[starion88esir]

Plan on posting pictures of the spot? I'd love to do something similar beside my porch. How deep do you have to go with the concrete to ensure it's strong enough?

[Steveb]

FYI:

It's bollards, not ballards.

We pour them at gas stations all the time. Eight feet of 4" schedule 40 black iron pipe, half above ground, half below, filled with concrete.

They don't move easily.

[JimG4652]

Awesome CP! Congrats!

[Black_peter]

FYI:

It's bollards, not ballards.

That's right. They are used on ships as well. For tying off running rigging.
So they predate gas stations by a few hundred years!

[Robgsxf750]

Good luck CP. Looking forward to the pics.

[The CyberPoet]

Plan on posting pictures of the spot? I'd love to do something similar beside my porch. How deep do you have to go with the concrete to ensure it's strong enough?

First, a disclaimer: construction engineering in general & concrete in particular aren't my specialty areas...

From what I've been told by various contractors & by my other half (who worked a construction site done primarily in concrete for a summer as part of her Master's degree requirements), for a parking space/drive-way, it's a minimum of 6" depth of 3000 psi concrete here in Florida, plus a 12" x 12" footer around the edges facing any water run-off areas to keep water from undercutting it. That depth or minimum PSI strength may change as you go north and have to deal with issues like frost-heave -- but the local building code, building inspector, or even the local concrete vendor can probably tell you right off the top of his head.

As for rebar or not-rebar, there's an on-going debate in the industry as to whether fiber-reinforced concrete is as good as in-laid rebar or not for purposes of driveways/parking spaces/sidewalks, with a general consensus that rebar (#3 for this use) is superior in the long run if the subsurface prep-work isn't that good, but it's a whole lot cheaper/easier to pour/pump fiber-reinforced instead if you're not going to have any subsurface settlement issues. If you do go with rebar, it needs to be at least 2.5" down from the top of the concrete level, to keep future rusting of the rebar from splitting the concrete directly above it (and at least 2" off the bottom -- they typically support the rebar with some formed plastic [called chairs & look like pizza box support disks] during frame-out and leave them there for the pour/pump). Whatever type of concrete you use, make sure you use a good concrete vibrator to get proper results; the proper compaction of the concrete with a vibrator gives it the serious strength you need/want.

Personally, if the entire property were my place and I was doing it in an undeveloped section of the property, I'd do the dig-out and framing, lay the rebar (if I used any), then pay a pro-level concrete worker to check the frame-out and to do all the work from the instant the concrete was dispatched to the finished job. In this economy, you should be able to find a qualified worker cheaply enough, and with the Chinese being just about finished with their 3 River Gorges Damn, the price of concrete has dropped again to what I consider reasonable levels (while the damn was being built, the Chinese were supposedly buying up 50% of the world supply of it year-in & year-out, which drove prices through the roof).

PS - will post pics when complete.

Cheers,
=-= The CyberPoet

__________________________________________________ ________
CyberPoet's Katana Maintence and Upgrade Parts Offerings
The Best Metal Steel Aluminum Motorcycle Tire Valves in the World, plus lots of motorcycle & Katana (GSX600F / GSX750F) specific help files.

[The CyberPoet]

Pre-build plans:






Cheers,
=-= The CyberPoet

__________________________________________________ ________
CyberPoet's Katana Maintence and Upgrade Parts Offerings
The Best Metal Steel Aluminum Motorcycle Tire Valves in the World, plus lots of motorcycle & Katana (GSX600F / GSX750F) specific help files.

[scottynoface]

I like it, should work out pretty well.

[labbatom90]

congrats on the build!

my campus has one area like that. luckily its in a parking garage so its covered. there is a pull off right before the gate that is wide enough to get a bike through and has plenty of space for a few bikes. the other spots around campus reserved for motorcycles are just extra little paved areas in random spots. so absolutely no security

[DumbLuck]

when you do the electrical, see if you can lay some comm cable while you're at it. like maybe some Cat6, along with a couple RG6 chunks. you could wire a couple cameras, motion detectors, etc that would go off in your unit. Hopefully you have the freedom and proximity to the pad to get away with this. Looks good so far.

[SlipKid]

complete with 4 ballards (think 6" PVC tubing with rebar inside and concrete poured down them

I believe the word you're looking for is "Bollard"

For a little German vocabulary enrichment, you can say "Schiffspoller"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bollard

[The CyberPoet]

Yes, I typo'd... Consistently. Sorry & Thanks...

Cheers,
=-= The CyberPoet

__________________________________________________ ________
CyberPoet's Katana Maintence and Upgrade Parts Offerings
The Best Metal Steel Aluminum Motorcycle Tire Valves in the World, plus lots of motorcycle & Katana (GSX600F / GSX750F) specific help files.

[SlipKid]

My bad... I typo as bad or worse than anyone.

However, since you used the same incorrect spelling three times in your first post, I figured you'd be happy to get the correct info. Though granted, "bollard" is one of those words that, if you were to use it, an average person whouldn't have any idea what you're talking about anyway...

Anyway, no need for thanks! Just knowing that I helped is good enough for me.

[The CyberPoet]

Updates -- with pictures.

Pretty much the "Before" picture -- the morning the old man started breaking out the asphalt with a pick-ax. I felt sorry for him (for doing it manually), but that was the contractor's call, not mine. Guy with the saw wouldn't show up until late that afternoon:



After the asphalt was out, the dirt was kind of dug, and the form-work laid. What you don't see is that there's a sprinkler about 10" into the center section of the dig that I had to locate the pipe to, trace backwards, dig out, cut off, put in a new up-pipe and make sure there were no leaks under where my slab would end up... A nasty blister on my palm opened up whiling doing that and I had to do bikeweek with a dime-sized hole in my palm...



The crew then brought in a jack-hammer (or something like it) and started digging up the dirt for where the bollards and the conduit had to be routed, as well as under where the anchors would be set (inset items need at least 6" of concrete on all sides, including under them, to be properly planted):



Test placements of the bollards, post-hole digger and jacking spade visible:



After the dig-out was pretty much completed. The holes represent where the bollards & anchors will be set. The black dirt triangle on the right, close to the top is where I repositioned the sprinkler.



Typical bollard placement (note how it sits above the soil -- this is just temporary for placement reasons; the rebar ends up inside, not outside). You can also see the conduit running down inside the bollard -- it runs under the slab out one end for connection the building's electrical supply (that bit of trenching & connection is pending for next weekend).



The magic day arrives and brings the concrete truck. Not the standard "drum" type concrete truck that many people are used to seeing, but a rectangular truck with separate bins for concrete powder, water and additives (in our case, fiberglass netting), which gets mixed as the stuff comes down the spout by an auger.



They say every construction project goes wrong some-how. In our case, the concrete truck broke it's auger mix-and-delivery mechanism in the middle of the pour.



I was at BikeWeek the day they poured, and it seemed my cel phone was ringing off the hook every five minutes with updates & requests for clarification. We had them cold-joint it, basically breaking the job into two separate pours on two different days (as verses to the traditional pour-once, cut the concrete for expansion cracking afterwards). End of Thursday, 6 days behind schedule, job is half-done:



Example of the fiberglass meshing that was mixed into the concrete itself at time of pour (via the concrete truck's auger). This stuff is 1" tall and pulls out to be about 4 - 5" wide. It's mixed through-out the pour, and some of it floated to the surface when they were floating the stuff.



Well, it was Saturday by the time the concrete firm could get another truck out at the same time the concrete finishing guys could be on site, so Saturday around noon they started the second pour and laid in the rest of the bollards & anchors. Here's what the semi-finished product looks like (concrete laid & set, bollards filled with crete, anchors inset; still pending as of the picture: caps on the bollards, yellow traffic paint on the bollards and on the less colorful of the anchors, trench & lay conduit & wire into the building, plus ramp the edges of the concrete):


Same thing, other end of the parking slot:



Final picture for today's posting -- I am very pleased about the electrical outlet out here, with the conduit running inside the concrete inside the bollard. The plastic around the base of the bollards is because we were getting ready to cap & paint them when I shot these pics...


Cheers,
=-= The CyberPoet

__________________________________________________ ________
CyberPoet's Katana Maintence and Upgrade Parts Offerings
The Best Metal Steel Aluminum Motorcycle Tire Valves in the World, plus lots of motorcycle & Katana (GSX600F / GSX750F) specific help files.