DRICORE....as a floor. Not a subfloor

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“ Dricore rates their standard subfloor product at supporting 6642 pounds per square foot”

Pretty sure they find this by neatly stacking bricks or bags of sand on a panel until the plastic substrate collapses. Then they divide the total weight by 4 to get the “square foot” capacity.

But cars, horses, and machine tools don’t have square feet let alone 12”x12” square feet. You really want to know the point load capacity, basically the puncture resistance of the panel.

A 500# machine sitting on four leveling feet will be applying about 125# on each of four particular square inches. 12”x12”=144@125#per=18,000#. You could put something under the feet to spread the load but what about when you’re rolling the machine on casters?

We don’t really know from that 6642#square foot rating how it would fair under a small hard wheel under a heavy machine but since Martin fielder says it works with the very heavy machines in his shop...  [cool]

At my former job, we had a mezzanine where we stored paperwork, but we also had a pallet jack that we wheeled things around with.  The concrete floor was rated at 125 lb/sq ft or something.  I asked how I was able to walk up there at that load rating, and I got a speech about static loads vs. impact loads and overall loads vs. point loads.  I was then told to just weigh the boxes and make sure any given pallet didn't exceed the rating.

 

[Df1k1]

[member=60461]Bob D.[/member] Looking good!

 

[Bob D.]

I've gone as far as I can, ran out of panels. Maybe they have some more in stock now. I bought all they had except for a few that were damaged. Need about 65 more so I'm half way at 64 panels installed.

I got he TS and my workbench up on the new floor. My bench I had anchored with Hilti drop-ins in the floor. I thought that might be tough to hit those marks but it was easy to do.  Just have to remember your basic geometry. I wonder how these concentrated loads and the bench being anchored to the floor will affect movement of the panels. It can't float everywhere now so I hope it doesn't buckle up with temperature and humidity changes. This is probably the best time to be putting it down as the temps are middle of our range. It's going down in the 40s at night and into the 70s during the day. In a normal year we can see low teens and  20s up to 100°F in Summer.

Still lots of equipment to shuffle around as I keep working at this in between my regular work around the house.

One good thing is I will have touched just about everything in there before this is over and I've got a trash can and a scrap bin right there so no excuse for not tossing what I don't need. Hopefully I can clean out a bunch of stuff. I've taken two loads of scraps of wood and outright trash to the dump since I started this. I even trashed my old shop radio, time for a new one after 20+ years. Was a bookshelf stereo system with cassette tape player, don't need that anymore.

Still want to make room for a small CNC. I've been giving the possibility of eliminating my RAS from the shop. There are other ways to do what I use it for that don't take up so much real estate and are safer to use to boot. I know it won't bring anything if I sell it and knowing how dangerous they are I don't know if I want to. It's a shame as it is in very good condition and has all the safety upgrades that were part of the recall campaign years ago. I considered removing the saw motor and turning it into an radial arm router but probably not practical and just as dangerous so tossed that idea out.

I'll wait and see if my local Lowes gets any more panels in Monday if not I guess I am driving to the next closest which is 25 miles away. HD is more plus no military discount so difference in price is about $1/panel. Makes it worth burning 2.5 gallons of diesel @ $3.09/gal.

 

[Bob D.]

I guess I have sorta hijacked this thread documenting my Dricore install, but hey you asked for photos as I went along so just tell me when you've had enough. Might as well log all of this in one place so the next guy can learn from my mistakes.  [scared]

Since I last reported on this I have purchased another 64 panels. With the 64 I bought so far that is 128 which gets me closer to what I need. You don't really get 4sf coverage per panel. That 2x2 is nominal, actual exposure is 23.25" x 23.25". That 3/4" adds up and after 12 rows you're missing 9 inches. So looks like it will could take as many as 169 panels (13x13) not 144.

I decided to leave the bandsaw on the floor and not lift it. I am thinking I should have dome that for the DP too. The bandsaw base intersects four panels so I set that many aside which when we move sometime in the next 2 or 3 years I can use to repair the opening I left for the BS. I think I will go back and do the same for the drill press, but since that area of the floor is already covered I will cut an opening for the DP base plus a 3/8" all around. Then set the DP back in that opening and relevel and anchor to the floor again using the existing Hilti anchors.

Finding the anchors for the WWing bench was easy. Don't know what I was thinking when I mentioned it would be difficult but later my brain kicked in and I realized all I had to do was swing an arc off the center of each anchor and I could use that to precisely locate the location on top of the Dricore then drill a 3/8" hole for the 5/16" rod. Worked like a charm. I used my beam compass to draw roughly 90 degree, 14" radius arc from each anchor then after placing the floor panels I came back and swung off two points on the arc to locate the center and X marks the spot. Drilled my holes and didn't miss a one.

The most time consuming was raising the table saw/router table/outfeed table assembly since they are interconnected. On the TS base I have built a cabinet to store saw blades and other accessories for the TS and the router. Working by myself it took time running from corner to corner to raise it up (and keep it close to level) so I could get some 3/4 plywood under it and roll it over onto the new floor. Once I did that I was able to put down some more panels under where the TS lives and then shuffle some more equipment around.

Then it was time to start putting shelves back on the wall and the bench back together so I could get the stuff that was on the wall off the floor and make room to keep going with the floor. But first I needed to paint the wall.

I also needed to get my fastener cabinet back in place and loaded up again as I had boxes of screws and such all over the place. That took a while to organize but it now done and much neater than it was (see photo) but not perfect (and probably never will be).

So that's all I got done in the last week on this between all the usual stuff that keeps me busy every day. Probably won't get a chance to work on this again for a week or two except I will try to squeeze in some time to shift equipment around and clear the next section of floor.

There is one area that I need to figure how to deal with. In the third photo you can see an area I have outlined in red which is about 3 feet wide (L to R) by 9 feet long. In that area the floor slopes up from right to left 3/4" to meet the floor in the old section of the garage. Why they did not make then the same I don't know. Maybe it settled over time but the new section which is the shop area was only 5 years old when we bought the house and it was like that then. I thought maybe the plan was to add radiant heat in the floor but 3/4" doesn't seem anywhere near enough for that.

Anyway my thought is to end the Dricore and the right side of that sloped area and finish the edge with some 1/8 x 3/4" aluminum angle then use some self-leveling grout to cover that sloped area and bridge between the old floor and the Dricore.
I will cut an straight edge on the panels and butt the angle up to it with the horizontal leg out into the grouted area. I am thinking I can either just seal the angle to the concrete with some adhesive or use some Tapcon screws. But the angle would protect the edge of the Dricore and the grout from getting crushed when moving heavy loads over them and it wouldn't look bad. I guess I could use steel but I already have some aluminum left over from another project so thought I would use that up. But that's my guess at how to make this transition. If anyone has a better idea I would like to hear it.