Today was concrete day, I searched online and found a guy down the street from me that bought a cement mixer and rents it out to people in the community for $25, I thought that was a hell of a deal. I bought 10 bags of 6000PSI concrete (twice the PSI spec that is required in the lift guidelines). I started mixing bags and shoveling them into the holes and it became very evident that 10 bags was no where close to what was required. I left the mixer running and quickly made it to the hardware store to buy 11 more bags before they closed for the night. In total 21 bags left me with about half a bag of extra concrete. I used my hands to push as much concrete as i could up and under the slab to lock the lift footing into the existing slab/rebar.
I also took the time to level the footings even though the garage floor is not level (slopes toward the door). This way the lift will be mounted without shims and will lift the vehicle vertically.
The concrete mixer was a great idea that i feel did save a lot of time however it took about 2.5 hours to clean it. If it was summer i could use a hose but its winter and -20 outside so i had to clean it in the garage using hot water in buckets, SOS pads, and a flat screw driver. It's important to me that it be returned cleaner then i when i got it, I just didn't realize how hard that would be.
Parts should be here Thursday to convert the garage door over to high lift so i can lift vehicles all the way up to the roof without the garage door or opener getting in the way. I will take some pictures of that as i go. Cost to buy the opener, drums, cables, spring bars, springs, track extensions, etc all totaled a little under $1000. I called around before buying the parts myself and the cheapest bid was $700 just for labor, parts were an additional $900. Figured I could do it myself, I watched a YouTube video.... that makes me an expert now. 🙂
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