Ok, Its Not Exactly Metalworking

[dgoddard]

Among other things you might note that my shop is not big enough, but if you are wondering what that thing is, it is a cedar board in the process of becoming a cedar threshold. I did this 7 hears ago on an 8 foot piece to stop water entry under the basement door and it has proved very successful. but this one is 10 feet.

It seems that when this house was built no one thought to put any slope to the concrete where the 8 foot door exits the basement and the 10 foot door exits the garage. The result is that when the wind and rain conspire to blow the rain against the door, it all runs down and seeps under the door. Finding and buying a solution is not particularly easy. If you can find a threshold it is probably special order, will take a month and it costs like hell.

My solution is to make a custom threshold. The material of choice is cedar because of its insect and weather resistance. The trick is to put a chamfer on the edge of the cedar that starts at the face of the door and extends for an inch or two to the edge. The greater width of chamfer is needed for some door edge gaskets so the rain slide off onto the chamfer. In this case Ineeded a 10 degree chamfer. But the chamfer is for more than runoff. When there is an abrupt edge the tire will hit it and tend to try to slide the threshold. The chamfer makes the edge of the threshold thin enough that the tire pretty much comes down on the threshold rather than running into it.

Cutting the chamfer with a plane for 10 feet of length is a real pain. I do not have a router and the plane I have is too small for that much work. But I do have a 2800 lb Lagun FTV-2 and a fly cutter. I have to repeat the set up a few times and due to a wall and the lathe being in the way, I end up with the chamfer a foot short on each end. That much I can do with my undersized plane especially if I blend out the chamfer to full board thickness at the end of the board. And that blend then helps to slope the chamfer so as to take water away from the door posts. The indoor chamfer can be a good bit blunter than the outdoor one as water diversion is not a problem on that side.

The Threshold will be secured with some concrete screws but primarily it will be bonded and caulked to the concrete with urethane construction adhesive. It will become a dam to any water infiltration from the edge of the slab which projects beyond the door. The concrete will be etched with hydrochloric acid prior to bonding to assure a raw concrete surface for the construction adhesive to grip.

If the door opening is on the side of the garage where the eaves are rather than in the end under the gable, you can pretty much depend on there being a crack in the slab almost dead center in the doorway. It seems that no one ever thought of the fact that the trusses or rafters rest on the doorway header which transfers all their load to the two door posts Those concentrated loads then bear down on the slab which has uniform support under the center. This bends the slab and it cracks exactly where you would expect. A cedar threshold can be made thinner in the center to try to correct for the hump associated with the cracked slab. It seems that nobody ever thinks to put an adequate footer under that edge of the slab ! However the crack must be blocked. This is easily done by drilling straight through the slab at the crack where the threshold will cover it and then back filling the hole with urethane insulation foam or construction adhesive.

This wood working project may be of some interest to those of you who have a shop with a big door, even though it is a bit of misapplication of a metal working mill. (I just don't happen to have good wood working tools.)

[Mr Ron]

You do what you gotta do. I do wood on my metal working machines all the time.

[spro]

For me this is a keeper. You need to Read.

[BadDog]

Nice job, looks like some of mine.

What is with people doing stuff like that? My current time-suck, er house, has a similar problem. The pool deck appears to have been put in almost level and even with the rear slab. Subsequent surfacing makes it about even with the tile inside. And like you, heavy rain and wind from the north cause water intrusion. But mine is a sliding glass door that the PM (previous moron) sealed into place by adding a layer of concrete board and stucco over the flange so the door can't even be removed without demolition. Someday, but not now. So my solution was to make a sort of track with inverted angle iron and 2 pulley-rollers making a trolley to guide a grinder with masonry blade straight right along the edge of the wall. End result is a ~1" deep trough/gutter about 3/4" wide to carry water away from the door opening. To make matters worse, the PM also (in apparent effort to "fix" the problem) poured concrete in an adjoining planter area to make it flush with the deck. So I jackhammered out that ~10+ thick slab and put (back) in a sunken flower bed about 3' wide an 24' long. That forms a fairly large reservoir in itself, but I also put in a 3" drainage along the slab, under the side walk, and into a roughly 50 gallon cistern near my grape vine trellis. I'll address it more permanently when I grind the pool deck and redo that entire end of the house, but for now, no more water intrusion problems.

[mixdenny]

You don't have a radial arm saw or table saw? Gotta diversify that workshop! I have done the opposite of your nice work around... I used my radial arm saw to cut a deep 1/8" slot in a large aluminum block. And I use the miter saw regularly to cut aluminum stock.

Dennis

[dgoddard]

I rather thought I was getting a bit off topic for this site but I see that perhaps I am not the only one who has problems getting a dry floor in my work areas. So to that end I thought I would post a bit more about my earlier related project. That case was much larger and part of the original rehab of this house and for which I hired a contractor so that I might benefit from his expertise, although the threshold part of the job as well as the design of the fix was my doing. Let me start with a picture:

The problem was that when the house was built a patio slab was added along the back wall where the basement came out of the hillside. It appears that with the weight of the house on it, the floor slab had settled a bit more than the patio slab and the settling encouraged the patio slab to tilt toward the house. This resulted in rain water accumulating all along the basement wall, seeping under the plate and rotting out the plate and the ends of the 2x6 studs (not to mention the mouldy stink in the basement. The contractor informed me that the usual fix was to:
-- support the joists of the floor above,
-- cut the bottom off the wall,
-- put down a treated plate,
-- scab on some extensions to the studs, and
-- reface the wall.
He also allowed that my assertion that such a fix would merely rot out again and still leak water under the wall was accurate. After I showed him the above diagram of my idea of a fix, he heartily agreed that it was superior, reasonably easy to do, and would eliminate the fundamental problem.

By pouring the curb under the wall and extending it out to the joint of the two slabs, it assured that I would have no place for water to accumulate on the floor slab of the basement.

This picture shows the results 6 years later.

The cedar threshold seems to be holding up very well, and resists vehicles being driven over it so that I can work on them adjacent to my shop and all my tools. The portion of the curb that extends out from under the wall is clearly visible and in 6 years has not leaked any water being fully tied into the poured concrete basement walls at the ends and fully bonded to the floor slab with material specifically made for bonding new concrete to old. The curb contains rebar and also anchor bolts for the new plate. During construction the plate was held up to the cut off studs with an automotive floor jack while the nails were driven with a pneumatic "Palm Nailer" which is an amazing device for driving nails where a hammer cannot be swung.

The doorway consists of an 8 foot wide steel frame with two 4 foot steel doors that swing inward. The threshold has a rib of cedar for the doors to stop against and to hold a door seal. A drip rail (cedar) was added to the doors to keep rain water from dripping into the joint between the door and the cedar rib of the threshold. Now that we are revising the garage a bit. I am following a similar approach with that doorway.

[dgoddard]

....What is with people doing stuff like that? My current time-suck, er house, has a similar problem. ......So my solution was to make a sort of track with inverted angle iron and 2 pulley-rollers making a trolley to guide a grinder with masonry blade straight right along the edge of the wall. End result is a ~1" deep trough/gutter about 3/4" wide to carry water away from the door opening. .....

I have also, at another home, made good use of an inverted angle iron. I used it for a threshold under the edge of a garage door. the angle iron was positioned by concrete anchors and bolts. Then, at installation the v of the angle iron was filled with urethane insulation foam and quickly positioned while the foam was still expanding. I used the "Great Stuff" brand aerosol can type. The foam made a water proof bond of the angle iron to the concrete so that water would no longer drip off the eaves, run under the door edge and freeze it down, (North Dakota ), That works well but is less flexible about dealing with a threshold that is not flat across the width of the opening. However if the door gasket can accommodate the degree of out of flatness, that is relatively quick, easy, and durable.

[SteveHGraham]

Putting a piece of wood on the mill makes you realize just how lame woodworking tools are.

[TomB]

I think they make what you want in rubber. I remember glueing one in for a neighbor and it stopped his water problem.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/260955403972?lpid=82

Tom

[Lew Hartswick]

Putting a piece of wood on the mill makes you realize just how lame woodworking tools are.

Doesn't it just though. I had the experience just last (or was it 2) year with some fancy
work on the Bridgeport.
...lew...

[SteveM]

Putting a piece of wood on the mill makes you realize just how lame woodworking tools are.

We made a Pinewood Derby car to look like a Lego piece. Used dowels in holes to simulate the pins. Used the indexing table on the drill press to get all the holes lined up perfectly to the thousanth.

On another car, we made the car so thin, that we didn't have enough car left to drill and fill with lead to bring up to 5 oz, so we had to go with tungsten slugs. Problem was that the car was 7/16" thick and the slugs were 3/8". My drill has a bit of runout and the car would have just shattered had we tried to drill the holes.

We put the car in the milling machine vise with parallels on either side to contain the wood from splitting and used a center-cutting end mill to drill the holes.

We took first that year.

Steve