Stating what why and how

Jim’s Smart kit build – Facebook 2023

I’ve had a desire to add a carport/ deck ever since we finished owner building our house, about eleven years ago. The council would not let us add this to our existing DA so we shelved it.

The upper story has had a temporary balustrade barrier made from extra top rails purchased at the time of our first build ready to add the deck when we could.

As shown by the photo here

Below is the original plan I drew up for an addition to our build eleven years ago.

Then in February 2020 I was diagnosed with cancer. Three of them – Prostate, Bladder and Bone cancer, originating from the prostate. I was a bit devastated at the time as you could imagine escpecially when the oncologist said I had two to fifteen years to live. I’ve had chemo and am on the recovery mode, but who knows?

Bruce Willis then me. I mean me then Bruce Willis.

Chemo ain’t fun.

I decided to start some projects to take my mind off it , which helped. The first was a small cupboard that a friend wanted me to do up a while before cancer (procrastinator here – but no more). 

The next was to cut a grove of bamboo that had grown out of control ( very hard job that one as I lost all energy and could only work for an hour – rest for another hour, do a bit more, maybe half an hour and knock off for the day to have a nap). 

Then two church pews I acquired from a friend and did up. I also made new lions feet on an angle for them to lean them back a bit more.

We had a “Busy Bee” effort here by the awesome locals to clean up our neglected five acres property (due to lack of energy – chemo). That was a big boost me for and a huge thanks to the many who came on the day and we continued to clean up on our own afterwards. I can manage a lot better now.

Needing another project I asked my long suffering wife, without whose help I doubt I’d be here, If we could maybe tackle the carport / deck. She said yes.

So we drew up plans based on a drawing I did on the iPad (as per second picture above)eleven years ago.

I tried to get an engineer to specify the build materials but after emailing around locally, eventually found an engineer but she wanted a plan drawn up by a draftsperson. No draftspersons would return my messages. – no one answered phones or emails – ( Covid had started during this).

So we searched the net and came across “SmartKits” and a few others. SmartKits looked the best from their website so after contacting the salesman – Drew, we paid our preliminary deposit and eventually had a kit and engineers plans/drawings delivered and paid for. Somehow we got the wrong size post columns but a phone call to Chris at SmartKits soon had us resupplied.

We could not submit the plans to council without going through the NSW governments new u bute  Planning portal. This was a nightmare. I had to give up trying as it was extremely frustrating for me – no patience. Luckily my wife, Denise to the rescue, she persevered until it eventually got passed.

It is a carport /deck but we had to submit fire report, environmental impact statement, contour map, existing plans of the house showing where gas bottles were, how many rainwater tanks blah blah blah etc…..  All this and we already had a house on the block. – very frustrating. I felt like giving up even though we had the kit.

Without Denise it wouldn’t have even started. Thanks Denise.

The council, after many visits and phone calls to them eventually passed it. Woo hoo, we could start. 

My brother stayed for a little while and I helped him set out the footings. Thanks Bill.

Next we needed someone to dig the holes 600 mm diameter all eleven of them, on fill and some needed to be 2 meters deep. A local contractor mucked us around for some time so we ditched him and got a fantastic guy Paul with a crawler excavator who hired the 600 mm auger attachment as he didn’t have one. Did a great job but had difficulty getting some of them to stay straight so we had a bit of squaring up to do. 

We decided to build as per the SmartKits way of suspending everything before the columns were concreted. The ones I saw on the SmartKits utubes comprehensive site are very helpful. Our project is big 13.5m long 6 m wide and 3m high with a 1 m balustrade on top( as it is a deck as well) so 4m high.

How do we float everything for months until the concrete pour? Luckily we had the scaffolding left over from owner building the house, so, as it has jackeable feet we could adjust the height as needed.

After the scaffolding was up we just laid everything to do with the floor/ ceiling on top, squared it up with the well known diagonal measurements and level (although the top floor had to have a fall away from the house to shed water according to the fibro cement product sheet Secura flooring of 1:100). Once the basic structure (lots of measurements, cutting of beams, holes to be drilled and screws and bolts to fit) was up we hung the columns, got the council out to pass the structural integrity and we were good to go with concreting.

I sure was glad to have the concrete done as heavy rain could have collapsed the sides. The holes kept getting frogs (about 50 of them) and one snake trapped in the bottom (hard to get out of the two metre deep holes). It felt really good to have the columns solid in the ground. My concrete volume calculation was spot on at five cubic metres as we had none left over and not short either.

Our custom built (by me) balustrade was a job and a half, but done now. 

Had some custom made post brackets done at Midcoast Metal Mart Taree and got colour bond sheets cut to size for the panels there too.

We used the left over top rails from the house and bought some other bits and pieces, a bit of welding and painting. The gutter went on pretty easily as we moved the scaffolding along the edge.

The flooring went on well but a bit of a job to get it (fifty sheets 19mm thick – two tonnes)all up there.

Pop riveted all of the corro sheets on and then we rolled waterproofing on the deck (3 coats undercoat) and painted the 3 topcoats.

A big thank you to the SmartKits team Scott, Drew, Chris, Mick and Kelsey for all your help along the way and making our eleven year dream come true.

Another big thank you to all my family who supported us in achieving our dream.

Wooh hooh- finished at last.

I feel a new project coming on