Dennis,
I'm not a civil engineer, but I noticed immediately that you didn't include
any cost for permits, site preparation, grading, handling water run off, nor
the substantial amount of base material you need under that minimun of 4
inches of concrete.
With the freeze/thaw cycles we see in the north every winter, you would end
up with massive whoopdie doos all over your pad in no time without a solid
base to hold everything together.
Larry Steckel
>From: dg50@daimlerchrysler.com
>Reply-To: dg50@daimlerchrysler.com
>To: autox@autox.team.net
>Subject: Any Civil Engineers in the House?
>Date: Tue, 3 Oct 2000 14:53:31 -0400
>
>OK, here's something else to chew on.
>
>It seems that I may be buying a farm soon.
>
>Niner wants a house. She wants to move out of our apartment, and get a real
>house. I want a big-ass garage - actually, I want a proper race car shop -
>and I've worked in a shop that was a converted barn before, and that works
>well. So we're going out looking for hobby farms that are close to Windsor
>(of which there are plenty) that have decent houses with modern facilities
>and a big-ass concrete-floored barns.
>
>However, these farms tend to come with large slices of land attached. I'm
>not about to take up farming (although I may sub-let land to Real Farmers)
>so I may well find myself with a large tract of land 30min outside of
>Detroit sometime in the next few months.
>
>Hmmmm.....
>
>A 4wd chassis dyno costs $60,000 US. That's $100K CAN. That's a whole lotta
>coin. So stuffing a dyno into my dream shop isn't a likely near-term
>possibility.
>
>But a back-of-the-napkin calculation says that a 200'X200' pad, at a depth
>of 4", works out to roughly 40 cubic yards of concrete. At roughly 10 cubic
>yards of concrete per truckload, and roughly $100 per truckload, then that
>pad costs $4000. Still not chump change, but a 200 sqft pad is a decent
>sized skidpad....
>
>OK, so 1/8 mile is 880 ft. Let's call it 800 to make the math easier.
>That's 16 "squares" at $4000 each, for a total of $64,000. Still cheaper
>than the Dynojet - but now there's 16 acres of concrete down. I'm thinking
>that's large enough to run a pretty decent sized autocross course on....
>and it's WAY cheaper than I thought. And I bet paving with asphalt is even
>cheaper per square foot.
>
>All of a sudden, the idea of building a dedicated autocross facility
>doesn't seem quite so far-fetched. I had always figured an initial price in
>the millions, not the tens of thousands. Can building a facility *really*
>be cheaper than buying a Dynojet?
>
>This is all back-of-the-napkin stuff. An exercise in entertainment. Playing
>a little "what-if" with some numbers. I certainly am not realistically
>expecting to build my own autocross site anytime soon.
>
>But still...
>
>Anybody know:
>
>1) How big (lengthXwidth, in feet) the competition surfaces are at
> a) Harrisburg
> b) Petersburg
> c) Topeka, South Course
>
>2) A rough price per square foot for asphalt paving
>
>3) If 4" of concrete is thick enough. If not, how much thicker? How much
>more $ per square foot does rebar etc cost?
>
>4) Any other important details that have been overlooked? Assume that
>unskilled/semi-skilled labour is available for free for really basic tasks,
>like building forms, laying and tying rebar, digging drainage ditches, etc.
>
>Any civil engineers in the house?
>
>DG
>
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