Basic structure assembled

The CMA CGM Cedrus made it into Barcelona at 03.50 pm today so should be able to get into Marseille on 04 March with my new mini-excavator.

So despite the other problems I have to deal with I’ve got to press on with building its garage so it’s ready for when it arrives. Today started chilly with quite thick fog and I thought that I’d get little or no work done but around lunch time the fog cleared in about 10 seconds flat and it turned into a lovely spring day. So with no time to waste I got cracking and by the end of the day I got the basic structure of the garage up.

The beam down the centre of the roof is only there temporarily as the garage will have a pitched roof to drain rainwater away. I’ll be working on that tomorrow and when it’s done the ridge beam will be higher. Also the timber across the front is only there to hold the frame in place and won’t be there when the garage is finished.

I was going to bang lengths of angle-iron into the ground at each corner and screw the frame to them but I’ve now dropped that idea. As shown in the next pic, I already had four long tent pegs made out of 12 mm reinforcing iron so I drilled the bottom frame rails in each corner and secured them to the ground through the holes using the tent pegs. I think that’ll stop the garage blowing away in the wind.

After thinking about the problem, I’ve decided to use what is referred to here as ‘Panneau Agglomeré’ for the walls. It’s a kind of chip board made out of compressed wood shavings and is usually used for under-tile roofing and internal flooring. There are two types, internal and external but both are quite inexpensive with the internal being the cheaper of the two.

Shown below is an image of a very old sheet that I originally used to patch the floor in my large trailer. That was about 4 or more years ago and it’s been out in the weather the whole time since then. As the garage is only intended to be a temporary structure for a year or so the material should be more than good enough for the job.

I’ll also cover the roof with it and then put some roofing felt on top of that which I’ve hung onto since I built my last ‘abri’ in the garden of my old house in Plazac. I always knew it would eventually come in handy 😀