Show Me Your Pallet Projects!

[wrathsfarm]

What was wrong with it?

Heat in the floor... oh, that sounds like heaven to my feet!

I built a 40x60 barn a few years ago for the owner of a local Waste Management land fill that was all in floor heat. It was the nicest barn I've ever built. (500k build)..
Second floor loft, big for his RV and restored Trash trucks, walk in shower, and diner style kitchen.
A few pics I still have saved on my phone.

 

[Smokerbill]

I built a 40x60 barn a few years ago for the owner of a local Waste Management land fill that was all in floor heat. It was the nicest barn I've ever built. (500k build)..
Second floor loft, big for his RV and restored Trash trucks, walk in shower, and diner style kitchen.
A few pics I still have saved on my phone.View attachment 3733789View attachment 3733790View attachment 3733792View attachment 3733791View attachment 3733788

Waste management, huh? So he made you an offer you couldn't refuse??? LOL

 

[chickengr]

I built a 40x60 barn a few years ago for the owner of a local Waste Management land fill that was all in floor heat. It was the nicest barn I've ever built. (500k build)..
Second floor loft, big for his RV and restored Trash trucks, walk in shower, and diner style kitchen.
A few pics I still have saved on my phone.View attachment 3733789View attachment 3733790View attachment 3733792View attachment 3733791View attachment 3733788

that's a barn? I thought barn was for livestock, feed and agriculture machines. a sort of big stable.

 

[gtaus]

I'm not sure why it didn't dawn on me to share this, but I've been out a few times collecting pallets and I've found Flooring stores have pallets with sheets of plywood nailed on them. Usually around 38-39" wide to 38-50" long and usually 3/8-1/2" thick... But I just by chance wandered over and looked in their dumpster and I'm finding the same size sheets anywhere from Luan to 3/4" thick and the skids they use that have a channel routed down center for banding across top... The plywood/Luan is around $30/sheet brand spanking so that's gold in my eyes.

Those are great finds. Congrats. Last summer I lucked into getting a number of pallets with solid plywood tops. Everything from that 1/2" to 3/4" plywood. Spent some extra time to take them apart and saved the whole plywood top. They will be great for some future projects.

Those look like some heavy duty skids you saved. Are they 4X4's? They sure look thick in your pictures.

Do your own homework for local laws regarding this [dumpster diving].

Yeah, best to know the local ordinances before you dumpster dive outside of a business.

Last summer I was picking up a bunch of pallets sitting next to a dumpster at our local mall. I thought they were free for the taking as they were on public property alongside the dumpster. But then the store manager comes running out and tells me that I cannot take those pallets because they belong to the store. He said that they needed to return them for credit.

OK, I said, then why do you have them on public property sitting next to the dumpster? Well, he replied, we don't have anywhere else to store them. So, I asked him if he thought it was OK to use public property, by the dumpster, to stage their pallets that they claimed were not trash. Other businesses have designated storage areas on their property to store pallets for return, and I would never take those pallets. Clearly, their pallets were not treated the same as other businesses and they did not even have a sign out there informing people not to take them.

Well, I don't want to cause a problem even when I'm in the right. The manager let me keep the pallets I had already loaded into my trailer. I don't take any pallets from that spot anymore. It's not worth my time to get into a petty argument with the manager. Even when I think they are in the wrong and using public property for storing their pallets next to a dumpster. To me, that's just wrong.

Anyway, lesson learned. After that, whenever I found a new place that had pallets outside by the dumpsters, I would go into the store and ask the manager if I could take the pallets. Every other business that I went to had no problem with me taking pallets staged next to the dumpster. Some places, in fact, were happy to see people take those pallets because the store would get charged to have them hauled out to the landfill, and then they also have to pay a fee for pallet disposal at the landfill on top of that. So, those of us salvaging pallets are actually saving some of those businesses money when we take those pallets.

By the way, at our local mall, the security is so bad that they don't have lights out in the parking lot and they don't even have any security cameras watching the property. How do I know? Because I made a complaint to a store manager about some drifters accosting an older lady for money outside of their store. As I was walking towards the store, the grifter backed off and the lady got in her car and drove away. But I told the store manager that I would in no way let my wife shop at their store if she could not be safe out in their parking lot. That's when I found out that the mall would not turn on the parking lot lights and there are no security camera at all watching the property. The store manager was aware of the problem, he had made a number of complaints, and asked me to file a customer complaint.

I did. Never got any response.

Getting to the point, if you really wanted to take those pallets next to the dumpster, at that business, you would only have to go there when the store was closed, and nobody would ever do anything. If they cannot protect their customers in broad daylight, I doubt much if they will bother protecting their trash sitting outside by the dumpster. Plus, our local ordinance treats anything staged alongside the dumpsters as trash. It's just not worth the hassle for me as I have found other places to pick up pallets for free from businesses that are happy to see me take them.

 

[gtaus]

What was wrong with it?

Heat in the floor... oh, that sounds like heaven to my feet!

I don't know exactly what was wrong with the floor heat out in the garage. I don't know if the electrician knew either. But the fix was to bypass the thermostat control wire from the garage to the electrical panels in the basement, which powered up the floor heating circuit, and then everything worked. But, like I said, it took him almost 2 hours to figure out a fix.

The good news is that the floor heat out in the garage is working great. It went from 26F to 40F in about 24 hours, and then it kept going up to 45F, at which point I turned down the thermostat so it would shut off at that temp. Currently, the garage is sitting at a nice and toasty 44F today. It's actually a little higher than I wanted, so I might turn it down a bit more to keep the garage at about 40F. I'm kind of frugal and don't want to spend my money to heat the garage more than needed. Even if my garage floor heat is on the reduce price off-peak electrical load at half the normal rate. I have that small 60,000 BTU propane heater to kick the temp up to 55F in about 10 minutes if I want to work in the garage on my pallets or other projects.

For the house, the floor heat was great when I first installed it. My brothers and sisters used to visit with their little kids, and the babies would run around in the basement bare footed in the dead of winter like it was mid-summer. The slab heat was fantastic.

But the electric cables for heat in the floor burned out in about 7 years. There was a class action lawsuit over the whole fiasco - the wires were supposed to last a lifetime - but I was in the Navy at the time overseas, and when I got to the USA, it was too late to get any compensation for my loss.

A lot of people got took on that electric floor heat situation with the wires burning out. As good as it was for those 7 years, I would never recommend installing floor heat like that. If anything happens to those wires, you are left with nothing. I would go for baseboard heaters in the house and an electric overhead heater in the garage. That way, if you had equipment problems, you could easily replace the unit. And you still can get them on that off-peak rate for heating.

 

[gtaus]

I built a 40x60 barn a few years ago for the owner of a local Waste Management land fill that was all in floor heat. It was the nicest barn I've ever built. (500k build)..

That looks like a great build. Again, I absolutely loved our floor heat until the wires burned out. Did you use electric wires or a hydro system?

I agree with the others. I have never seen a barn looking that good!

Come to think of it, I have a neighbor that his garage all decked out with a tile floor, furniture, and some appliances. No bathroom. But I think he might even have running water in that garage. Anyways, the garage is too pretty for his cars or 4-wheelers, which sit outside all winter. I don't understand it, but to each his own, I guess.

 

[gtaus]

that's a barn? I thought barn was for livestock, feed and agriculture machines. a sort of big stable.

You are right. I have never seen a "barn" that nice before. Obviously was not built for livestock or farm equipment. I would consider more in terms of an industrial garage. It sure does look nice.

 

[wrathsfarm]

that's a barn? I thought barn was for livestock, feed and agriculture machines. a sort of big stable.

Pole barn... I'm sorry. My native construction language. Here's pics of a different barn just to show what I'm referring to.

 

[wrathsfarm]

That looks like a great build. Again, I absolutely loved our floor heat until the wires burned out. Did you use electric wires or a hydro system?

I agree with the others. I have never seen a barn looking that good!

Come to think of it, I have a neighbor that his garage all decked out with a tile floor, furniture, and some appliances. No bathroom. But I think he might even have running water in that garage. Anyways, the garage is too pretty for his cars or 4-wheelers, which sit outside all winter. I don't understand it, but to each his own, I guess.

Hydro. I'm not too familiar with in floor heat as this was actually the first time I had done it.
But it was a fun build. Led strips surrounding the ceiling and stereo system for the diner area.
I found a few more pics. My pics are out of sync on phone. I mentioned the walk in shower knowing I had a pic but then couldn't find it...

 

[wrathsfarm]

that's a barn? I thought barn was for livestock, feed and agriculture machines. a sort of big stable.

Pole barn... I'm sorry. My native construction language.

You are right. I have never seen a "barn" that nice before. Obviously was not built for livestock or farm equipment. I would consider more in terms of an industrial garage. It sure does look nice.

Sorry if my language is confusing.
I live in the country with livestock and cornfields but work in and around 2 of the biggest cities in Michigan, one being the state capital (Lansing) and the other is Ann Arbor which is University of Michigan (college football, dorms and hospital)
So one day I could be building a pole barn alongside Amish...

the next day working on this...

next door to this.....