Rolling oil drain pan for home shop mechanic's pit

[kb0thn]

how are planning to vent that area? Pits will trap dangerous gases if left with circulation...

There is a 500 CFM fan that pulls air from the bottom of the pit. State law requires 66 CFM based on the volume of the pit.

There is more discussion of this on the Practical Machinist thread I linked too.

[ronsii]

The concrete contractor did not finish the floor to the pit rim as it should have been. Very unhappy about that. Pit rim was dead level. But the concrete is 3/8" above the rim in some places and 1/8" below in other. Pretty pissed off about it. All it would have taken is to run the screed to the rim. But they didn't. And I get to look at it for the rest of my life. I hate concrete guys. But even seeing the defects, he declares the concrete is "perfect". But whatever, it's literally set in concrete. Nothing I can reasonably do about it at this point.
Attachment 1719935

I used the last of the really warm weather to paint it. I hate painting. Prep work takes forever.
Attachment 1719936

Rolled on Rust-Oleum oil based safety yellow. Did a couple of coats and then weather got cold. Will see how it looks next summer. I should have made the rim out of stainless.
Attachment 1719937

I use the rustoleum safety yellow for most all of the bollards and safety railing we do, it's ok paint for how much it costs... the sun will fade it and it's not real hard but is pretty tough although it doesn't handle forklift scrapes too well

[robson1015]

Very nice ! Too bad about the concrete job...can't believe he didnt make it right....

[akpolaris]

You would think that the mud guy would have screeded it away from the rim. Any floor drains? Drains would require sloping the finish towards drains. maybe not doable by this guy.

It was a lot of work. Not really done with it yet. Still need to make covers and get the utilities in there and figure out lights.

Looks like the start of excavation was September 13th. Looks like the paint photo was from November 10th. I'd guess 100 to 200 hours in there. And I bet it will be $15k by the time I finish with removeable covers for it. On the Practical Machinist thread someone asked about cost and I broke it down in there.

[kb0thn]

You would think that the mud guy would have screeded it away from the rim. Any floor drains? Drains would require sloping the finish towards drains. maybe not doable by this guy.

No floor drains on this slab. The floor was supposed to flat and level to within 1/8". This building is for working on stuff and as such I wanted big flat floors to work on. Squeegeeing out some melted snow on occasion is the tradeoff. The building as at the top of a hill, so the only water that comes in is what I bring in.

I have another building on the farm where stuff is parked and stored. It has 2ft+ of slope over 70ft of length. The "floor" drains are actually in the downhill walls. We just did concrete on that building this summer as well. It actually seems to be working well for storing leaking vehicles on. Everything goes downhill fast.

But I have other shops where there are floor drains and it just makes the type of work I do a pain in the ***. I hate having to use plywood for shims while welding big things on the floor. I rent another building at work where I have a 16ft wide bay with a drain in the middle of it. 2" of slope in that 16ft. Probably good for washing a car in, but damn there are a lot of shims under the racks and saws and conveyors in there.

What I see with the drains is that the concrete guys use them as excuses to make ****ty concrete. Put enough slope on it and they can eyeball the concrete in. As far as I can tell, they really don't know how to use anything longer than a hand level in general.

[kb0thn]

So with pit done, I had a nice hole in the floor. Made chain railing to go around it. But need to make actual covers. My criteria was that the covers needed to be strong enough to have a 15,000 wheel load them without failing. Right now I have equipment that is in the 40k lb range. But figure I might go to 60k. So wanted to be able to cover the pit and have unrestricted floor space. I had my mechanical engineer, Ted, design covers for it. Turns out that 15k wheel load over the width of the pit for span is quite a task. He ended up with a waffle pattern and his FEA showed that they needed to be fully welded. I decided that I would sub out the welding because it was going to be a lot. I had Andy weld all the covers. He is fast and super skilled and he spent 2 days fulling welding all the covers.

Hole in the floor:


Forming 1/4" steel:


Segments formed:

[kb0thn]

Ted called for fully welded. That is a lot of welding. There are six covers. Andy had to do a lot of jumping around to not turn these things into pretzels. He welded it with his Millermatic 251 and 0.035" wire. It was cold in my shed, so I noticed on day two that he had a weed burner and was preheating and probably keeping himself a little warmer.


After Andy finished welding, I had the covers sand blasted and painted with epoxy paint. Had them put some sand on top so they wouldn't be too slippery.

Here is a cover on the pit:


Each cover weighs ~250 lbs and there are 6 of them. I was concerned about bumping into the stack of covers and crushing somebody. So I made a rack to hold them. Laser cut 1/4" steel ribs, C5x9 channel, and 2x2x3/16" tube uprights.


Rack seems good and now they can all be moved easily with a forklift.

[kb0thn]

Tucked away.

[MinnesotaDave]

Those covers look excellent!!

[Tarmstrong]

Those are some beefy covers...nice build on everything.

With the price of metal these days...I am sure they were...ummm...not cheap!

[kb0thn]

I finally finished the rolling oil drain pan. I MIG welded it and had a couple of leaks. I'm not a good MIG weldor, but I am trying to force myself to use MIG for some projects so I can build my experience. But I got frustrated with the leak, got busy, and just ignored the oil drain pan. But I have been changing oil in the pit into 5 gallon buckets, and that's a mess. So got back to it. But of course the water from the previous test had rusted the thing along the weld seams. Which made fixing it more difficult.

I used the TIG torch to melt the bad MIG weld and make a broad bead. It went pretty well considering the rust, but I still had a leak after another water test. I was out of time at home for the morning, so I decided I would fix it quick at work before dropping it off for sand blasting. At work when I attempted to remelt things with the TIG arc, I would get explosions and massive bubbles of porosity. After lots of grinding and fighting it, I realized that the pulser on the TIG welder was causing it. At home I don't have a pulser. At work, Andy who normally welds at this machine, loves the pulser and always has it on. Once I turned off the pulser, it was smooth sailing.





And, of course, I got called out of town for work within minutes of placing the pan in the pit. Hopefully tomorrow I can test it!

[scsmith42]

Extraordinarily well done! Thanks for sharing.

[Stick-man]

Extraordinarily well done! Thanks for sharing.

I absolutely agree! WOW!!!

[kb0thn]

I finally got a chance to use the rolling drain pan. My 1 ton truck up on it. Drain shoots out the side and always makes a great mess. I used a piece of cardboard as a deflector and had almost no mess.



I think I will make a two piece cover that can keep dust out of the pan and deflect the oil into the pan.

[N2 Welding]

Well you done did it now. It’s all down hill from here “jk” keeping that drain screen clean now is a thing of the past. Enjoy the easy oil changes “thumbs up”

[VaughnT]

A great idea and execution. As I followed along, i was thinking that a good cover for it, something like a cheap rubber floor mat from the auto store, would be great to keep the dirt out and provide a place to set your tools while you're working on the underside of the vehicle.

Another idea that might be more useful depending on the height of the vehicle you are working on would be a large-mouth funnel attached to a magnetic base like what machinists use to fix their indicators to a lathe or mill. You could move the base around on the grating, and get the funnel right up to the drain plug no matter if you're working on some nasty Kia Rio or a honkin' big Peterbilt.

[ghost_walker]

could you not have two pieces of sheet cut to cover the mesh part, one slightly long and wider than the other with the long edges slightly curled up on both.

that way you have deflectors to guide the oil in, but once laid flat it makes a cover/ work surface?

[Willie B]

I have no photos.
When I built mine, I dug the hole by hand.
I formed the floor slab with 2x6 with a 1/4 mile of galvanized electric fence wire tying the form together staying in the slab.
Wall forms were of 2x4 & plywood. Hereabouts there was once a product called form wire, soft iron wire about 1/16th" diameter I ran out. I used #8 copper solid bare in its place. I screwed a 2x4 footer to the floor forms with many 3" drywall screws to secure the base & built wall forms inboard of that.
Driver of the concrete truck must have been in a hurry, he filled my form (5' tall) in a few minutes. All seemed fine until first copper tie wire broke. Like a dam breaking all the 3" drywall screws broke like machine gun fire. About 4 yards of concrete blew outward.
They returned next day with enough concrete to fill to the top. As it blew out, where it'd need to be backfilled anyway, my pride & my wallet were the only damage.

[_Weldman_]

That's bad I did better than your concrete guys on my first pour, holy schit that's bad on the pit rim to be 3/8 too high and 1/8 too low. Then again the question to ask is, what did they level it with? I was running Spectra GL622 grade level then would screed a line between two landing pads I measured for the vibra screed to run on. The battery died on it and had to plug in in the middle of it all, nothing eyeballed here.

Lovely pit BTW, funny yours is close to my dimensions that you initially planned out, made my frame from (2) 20' sticks and dimensions came from the angle cuts I wanted since it's channel iron facing outwards as you can see on post #465 on my thread. Wouldn't mind what you have for covers, but seems PITA to have to remove that much weight. Ever thought about putting a rolling jack/cradle so if you wanted to drop a transmission or 3rd member you could easy move it out?

[Noviastar]

hay nice project. Hope i can get into a place that makes things. After school.

[kb0thn]

That's bad I did better than your concrete guys on my first pour, holy schit that's bad on the pit rim to be 3/8 too high and 1/8 too low. Then again the question to ask is, what did they level it with? I was running Spectra GL622 grade level then would screed a line between two landing pads I measured for the vibra screed to run on. The battery died on it and had to plug in in the middle of it all, nothing eyeballed here.

They didn't run anything, that was part of the problem. They used my cheapie rotating laser to set grade pins before hand. But then when they were screeding, they would drive the pins under when they were about a foot away with the screed. So really they were just eyeballing everything.

Lovely pit BTW, funny yours is close to my dimensions that you initially planned out, made my frame from (2) 20' sticks and dimensions came from the angle cuts I wanted since it's channel iron facing outwards as you can see on post #465 on my thread. Wouldn't mind what you have for covers, but seems PITA to have to remove that much weight. Ever thought about putting a rolling jack/cradle so if you wanted to drop a transmission or 3rd member you could easy move it out?

The funny thing is that I only put the two covers on when I want to service the riding lawn mowers. I don't think I have ever had all the covers on. Usually have some piece of equipment that I am working on parked on top of the pit. I have definitely thought about a rolling channel to be able to put a jack under. That may happen this winter, when I will likely be taking the front end off a 30k lb telehandler.

Thanks and good luck on yours!

[_Weldman_]

They didn't run anything, that was part of the problem. They used my cheapie rotating laser to set grade pins before hand. But then when they were screeding, they would drive the pins under when they were about a foot away with the screed. So really they were just eyeballing everything.



The funny thing is that I only put the two covers on when I want to service the riding lawn mowers. I don't think I have ever had all the covers on. Usually have some piece of equipment that I am working on parked on top of the pit. I have definitely thought about a rolling channel to be able to put a jack under. That may happen this winter, when I will likely be taking the front end off a 30k lb telehandler.

Thanks and good luck on yours!

You’re welcome and thanks too, I’m sure we could bounce ideas of each other with time on these pits and maybe other things.
Notice the tripod with bucket on it, that’s the grade laser I ran while doing mine.

Would worry about your slope on heavy parts/machinery on a jack on rollers unless the track is flat, would put brakes on it of sorts to not roll to easily. Not enough room to park much on my pit cover, but for small stuff not too wide 3 inch channel should hold it like the framing of a trailer deck.