Work started at noon on Monday, 7/23/2018. See the log at the bottom of this page for daily updates. Welcome to the WolfGT Shop Construction page. Below, you will see three images. These images are from live cameras overlooking construction of the new shop. A description of each view is provided and a description of the construction project can be found below the images. As construction progresses, I will include some timelapse videos further down the page. A each camera view is automatically refreshed every 30 seconds during daylight hours.
From the doorway of the existing shop looking out.
From the corner of the house looking down the hill at the construction site.		From the front of the house looking out to the street.
This new shop/garage will be 26' wide and 40' long with 10' ceiling for the shop and 8' ceiling for the house addition (same as existing). There will be a second floor over the shop/garage that will create an addition to my existing house. There will be no doors or windows placed on the second floor (extension of the house). I will be building out the interior of that space myself later. I will add windows and doors at that time. The main purpose of this phase is to get my shop built and at the same time add the shell for the expansion of the house. What you are looking at in the images above are two different camera angles of the construction site and one of the street (to see construction activity out front). Driveway Level. You can't really tell from the pictures, but the driveway level is about 8' higher than the shop level. In the image provided above, there is about a 13' drop between the ground just below the camera (my driveway) and that driveway you see in the distance (my neighbor's driveway). The driveway will come in from the lower left corner of this view and run toward the back of the property and sweep down the hill (about a 10' drop) and enter the back of the garage. The new shop will begin at the middle right of the image (where you see the small piece of concrete) and will extend out toward the middle of the image 40'. The shop will be dug into the property about 3 feet below the existing shop and the wall closest to this camera will be about 8' deep into the ground. This will be an 8' tall concrete wall. There will be a 20' concrete pad at the very back outside the garage doors. Shop Level This will be a view from inside. The shop will be build around this camera angle. The new ceiling will be about 8" above this camera. 40' straight back will be two 10'x8' garage doors. There will be a staircase to the right and a set of double doors going out to a small concrete pad. Front View This view is from the front corner of the house facing the street. Figured this would be a good view of the equipment parked out front.
Construction Log (most current entry at the top) 03/01/2019 - Got word today that they are planning to come out this coming week to do the finish grading and put in the stone for the driveway. They will also take away all the trees and brush that I cleared at the back of the property. 02/08/2019 - They were back this morning at 8am and did the relief cuts. The next step while waiting for the builder to get supplies is to do final grading. Get the driveway down to it's final slope and remove the birm at the silt fence. Then take all extra dirt and push it to the back of the proerty to level it off/extend it. 02/07/2019 - Today was concrete day for the slab. The inspector was out on Tuesday (2 days ago) and we received a passing grade that evening. The crew showed up at 8am this morning and the pump showed up shortly after that. By 8:30 there were to large concrete trucks waiting to dump. The crew did a great job and by the end of the day the slab was done and the forms removed. The last thing they did was draw the lines for the relief cuts that they will be doing tomorrow. 02/03/2019 - They were back this morning and took care of the final items. Installed the forms, rebar and plastic. The contractor is trying to get the inspection scheduled for tomorrow and if that works out we should be pouring Tuesday. 02/02/2019 - The crew arived today to backfill the walls and to grade for the slab/footers. They did a great job today. They graded for the slab, dug the footers, backfilled the walls, installed the stone for under the slab and also graded the area on the upper side for the future patio. Since they needed to grade where the patio is going to go, the propane tank needed moved. I knew this and already had concrete pad for it on the side of the house. But since it has about 100 gallons of LP in it, I couldn't move it. So, I rigged it up and the excavator moved it. Tomorrow they are supposed to come back out and finish (install the forms, rebar and plastic barrier). 02/01/2019 - This is not exactly shop construction, but it ties in. I have had a huge problem with water on my property ever since I bought it. At the same time, I have always had issues with the ditch at the front of my property. It fills with dirt/sand. I know that is kind of normal, but not at the rate that it happens here. I have a culvert under my driveway that continues under my neighbors driveway (or I guess, reverse that, the neighbor is uphill). My culvert would fill with dirt, completely. They would come out and clean it out and two months later, my ditch and the culvert would be full again. This last time, they came out and cleaned it (about a month ago). I was happy to see it. I went out after they left and took a look and the culvert was half full of dirt. I immediately emailed them to ask them to come back out and finish the job. They did, but this time noticed something odd. The more then cleaned it, the more dirt came out. So they ran a camera up in there and found the issue. The culvert under my neighbor's driveway and the one under mine are not one culvert. Their used to be a small ditch between the two and at some point, comeone slapped a concreate slab over it and then the city paved over that. Nobody connected the culverts. So every time it rained, it was basically making a sink hole and depositing the dirt in the ditch and backing up the culvert. So, the fix. All they really needed to do was dig it up and repair the missing connection. But they took it one step further. They intalled a drain pit between the two culverts and a 2'x3' drain grate. Sloped the asphalt to drain into it an installed a small hump to divert water into it. They tested it after install by opening the fire hydrant up the hill. Now, for the first time, water does not flow down the street and turn into my driveway. So this will keep a ton of water out of the construction site and also help me keep things dry in the future. 12/11/2018 - They came today and removed the forms. Now we let the walls cure and then they will come to do final grade on the shop floor and put down stone for the slab pour. 12/07/2018 - Completed final steps for the forms this morning. Inspector showed up at 9am and they are ready to go. The pumper truck showed up a little after 11am and the first truck started to dump at 1pm. Went through 3 trucks. They estimated 26 yards. 12/06/2018 - More installation of the forms. 12/05/2018 - They are here today to begin the installation of the forms for the walls. Installation of rebar first and then the forms. 11/30/2018 - AND WE HAVE FOOTERS! The concrete crew arrived first thing this morning, in the rain. They didn't seem to care that it was raining. They just got to work. Setup the pump and right as they finished setting up the pump, the first truck arrived. It took two trucks. 11/29/2018 - The inspector showed up this morning at 9:30am. He wasn't here long. He was expecting the plans for the building to be onsite waiting for him. They weren't here. In fact, I have never seen plans for this and I'm not even sure they exist. But the contractor told the inspector he would bring them right over. The inspector said he would stop back by later. We'll see. Well, about 11am the contractor dropped off the plans. No more than 30 minutes later, the inspector is back. 11/28/2018 - The graders dropped off the excavator last night and the operator was here at 7:30 this morning. After getting it warmed up, he was up and running at around 7:45am. He should have this done today. Hopefully we can get the footer guys back out quickly. It was about 20 degrees this morning. The grader was done digging out that corner by about 10am and the footer crew was here unloading less than an hour later. They dug out the footers, setup forms and installed the rebar. Finished up in the dark at about 6pm. Ready for inspection. 11/20/2018 - Today we had our first bit of action since July. They came out today with a mini excavator and removed the remaining dirt from the foundation of the back of the house. This was the crew that will be doing the slab in a couple weeks and be handling the backfilling for the walls. Then the supervisor for the footer crew came out around 1pm and walked the site to get ready for the footer dig and poor tomorrow. They will be here first thing in the morning to get started. They are supposed to get the footers dug, inspected and poured in the next couple days. They may be here on Thanksgiving to stay ahead of the rain expected on Friday. Well, the plan quickly fell apart. Found that the back left corner of the original dig was not dug far enough to the left or far enough out to be able to get the new structure's footers in. That far left corner needs to be 2 feet to the left and 5 feet farther out. Now we wait for the graders to come back out. 11/02/2018 - Of course it has been raining. I have been running a small pump to remove the standing water. Been told that because of the rain, they will be starting next week. 10/30/2018 - Checked in again to see where we stand. Today is 2 weeks into the last expectation of 4 more weeks. Which is 6 weeks from the original (4-6 weeks out). I was just told that if the rain holds off, they may be starting this Saturday. If the rain comes, it will be next week. 10/16/2018 - 4 weeks into the 4-6 week expectation and I checked in to see if we were still on track. I was told that it would be another 4 weeks. I got a little upset. 9/14/2018 - Proposal signed and deposit made. I am told at the moment that it will be 4-6 weeks before they start. This is supposedly with rain delays figured in. I will be shocked if this is the way it goes. 9/6/2018 - Well, didn't go as planned. After a couple months of pushing out the start date, the concrete crew stopped returning the contractor's phone calls. So we met with a new crew today. He is working up a proposal. 07/25/2018 - Back at it this morning at 7:30. He took some time and did some maintenance on the equipment and it looks like he replaced the bucket teeth on the excavator. Because today they need to get through a bunch of rock up the left side of the property where the driveway is going to be. They made great progress today. Was going strong until just after 3pm. That is when one of the tracks popped off the excavator. It took them almost an hour to get it back on. Of course, 5 minutes after the track popped off, it decided to rain. So that got to do that wonderful task in the rain. Grading is all done for now. They did a great job. I think it will work out perfect. As I seen it all come together, I had to make an adjustment to the plan. The depth was already at the level of the neighbor's driveway and it needed to go another 10 inches to give me a 10 foot ceiling in the shop. I don't want any water issues, so I gave up some height to keep it from becoming a swimming pool. Also, the amount of height we needed to come down to bring the driveway around was a lot. As I seen it develop, I could see that trying to get it to come down and enter the concrete pad outside the driveway was going to make the transition just way too steep. So, I made the call to bring the retaining wall around the corner and have the driveway enter on just half of the parking pad. This gave us more room to make the driveway transition smooth so I can drive the vehicles with little ground clearance without issues (The Monster Miata was my concern). It would suck to have a nice garage and I couldn't drive my cars into it. Now I wait some more. The concrete crews are backed up. Maybe 2-4 weeks. So it will sit the way it is for a bit. I will watch closely for erosion issues. But since there were large portions of rock they had to bust through, I'm not thinking I will have any issues. Dump Truck Load Count = 34 (3 on 3/23, 17 on 3/24, 14 on 3/25) 07/24/2018 - They got rolling at about 7:30 this morning and had trucks rolling by just after 8am. They have been moving load after load out of here all morning. At about noon, the pumper truck arrived to clean out the old septic tank. After they were done, they got back to loading trucks and busting up the old tank. This day went well. A lot of progress and the weather was great until the moment they finished. Then it rained for about 2 hours. 07/23/2018 - At noon today, a couple guys showed up with a bobcat. They have marked out the area for the new addition and have begun to work on the driveway to make room for the trucks and the excavator. I adjusted the camera settings to upload every two minutes. Well, the first unexpected item was found pretty quick. An old septic tank is located right where the main foundation wall is going to go. They are going to get it pumped and they will remove it. Then the big excavator showed up along with another bobcat. They are moving right along. Today was a good day. It only sprinkled once and only for a couple minutes. Nothing that got in the way. Tomorrow will be a big day of moving dirt if the weather holds up. They are supposed to be rolling two trucks so they should be moving a load every 15 minutes or so. They said they will be going by 8 in the morning. It looks like a 30-40% chance of thunderstorms over night and tomorrow. Hopefully they move around us and they can get the heavy stuff done tomorrow. 07/20/2018 - As of this morning, no silt fence, no construction. Got word that it looks like it will be Monday before they get started and that the fence will be in today. Waiting for confirmation. 07/19/2018 - 9am this morning, that same Spectrum van showed up. We went out and talked over what was going to be done. He said that all he could do is remove the overhead line temparily and run one across the ground during construciton. Then come back and put it back up when construction is done. I said, I would rather have it buried. He told me that he couldn't, that was against policy. I looked at him with a confused look on my face and said, every other house I have had has had the line buried. He said, we have to run the cable the same route as the power. Confused once again, I said, the power is buried. He looked around and said, Oh, then we can bury the cable. So, for now, there is a temporary cable ran across the ground and he is setting up a ticket for the burial crew to come and put it underground. Why is this so hard? Also today, I met with the general contractor to go over the current schedule. Since it decided to rain again today, the start day of tomorrow is up in the air. I will know by the end of the day today. Even if we start Monday or early next week, we should have concrete by the end of next week. He said that someone should be by today to put up the silt fence. 07/18/2018 - So at 4:50pm today, a Spectrum van pulled up in front of my house. Didn't pull over, barely stopped. He sat in the driver's seat and looked at my installation from the van for about 30 seconds. Then drove off. Great, was that the service call? I have a feeling I am going to need to do it myself. 07/18/2018 - Spectrum was supposed to come out this morning between 10am and 11am to relocated the cable running from the pole to the house. Because it is hanging too low for construciton vehicles to pass under it to get to the back yard. So, 11:30am arrived and still no tech. Called and found out that there is an outage in Greenville and all techs were reassigned to that issue. No call, no tech, just left me waiting. They reassigned me to the pool and I got a call back at 2:40pm to reschedule. But, for some reason they had me in the system as an internet outage. Nope. So this guy, hopefully, scheduled the right type of visit. They are supposed to be here in the next 24-48 hours. If they don't show up tomorrow, I will have to temporarily reroute the cable myself. They are supposed to start construction on Friday. If the weather permits. 07/17/2018 - A guy from USIC arrived this morning at 9:15am to locate any services on the property that may get in the way of the construction. Looks like all that was done was to paint on the ground next to the utility pole at the front of the property and then a line just below the breaker panel on the back of the house showing where the power line comes in under the driveway.