I need to get a vehicle into a building. Having reduced the height of the vehicle to the absolute maximum it is still about 20mm too high. Raising the roof of the building is not an option and there is no feasible/structural way of increasing the headroom without reducing the ground level. The floor is 250mm reinforced concrete. Any ideas please on how to reduce the level, this only needs to be done around the threshold. There is plently of headroom without and within. Thanks. H.
Unfortunately you need a suitable car-sized hollow or at best a set of "tracks". I've never done anything on that scale, but I have tapered off concrete flooring a couple of times to replace a step with a ramp using a combination of 9 inch angle grinder and SDS chisels. Exactly how to tackle it depends on how neat it and durable needs to be, whether there might be services buried in the concrete in the area that needs attacking. There are industrial tools called scabblers that are used to remove the surface of concrete structures like old nuclear fuel pools that have radioactive contamination in the first inch or two.
Anything is possible. It might just not be cost-effective.
How close to the surface of the concrete is the steel reinforcement?
Take a diamond disc to the bastard, cut a straight line about two feet in from the end and the full length of the openeing., then hire a banjack (ask at the hire shop, it's what's used to dig up roads etc) and mash the last two feet of concrete off as much as you can.
You may need a few discs for cutting metal too, as chances are you'll need to have words with the reinforcements at some point.
When you've got it down to a depth you can live with, wash off loose crap and smooth over with strong sand/cement
Marry a fat biffer and have lots of litte fat sprogs, get them all to sit in the vehicle as you drive it in and out.
How often do you need to move the vehicle in and out???
if only once or twice a year, then as others have said, let air outa the tyres, that's how they get the trucks that have wedged them selves under the bridges in Grantham back out (happens every 2 or 3 days, once a double decker bus was turned into a single decker at one of the bridges)
If you need to use it as a garage, you could spend about a grand and have the vehicles suspension converted to air bags, release the air in the system and it'll sit on the bump stops, drive out and pump back up. you could go for hydraulic suspension like citroens, but that's a lot more complex and if you dont get the damper spheres right, it'll ride like shit.
as someone else said, cut 2 chanels into the floor, lots of work, may be cheaper and easier to have the floor broken up, dig down a bit and lay a new one lower down, but check drainage, you dont want the floor lower than the outside ground or it'll flood every time it rains without new drains being laid, and if you get that far you'd have been better off modifying the entrance height or raising the roof a few inches.
Which bit of the vehicle has the height problem [and what shape is it]? (if it is the middle I don't see how fixing the threshold will help - you need to fix the bit where the wheels are when you have the problem)
Also depending on the above - would lowering the ground outside the building help at all.
This is of no help with the vehicle problem, but it's occurred to me: if you and I were talking abut your sister Harriet, would she be the 'third person'?
Like Phil says, you'll have to break up the concrete floor.
You could do it properly - eg take the lot out and relay a 200mm slab with steel and/or fibre reinforcement to make up the lost strength, or you could try to dig out and re-construct just a lowered section under the door. If you choose the latter, remember that the 'ramp' will need to be longer than the wheelbase of the vehicle (assuming a flat roofed lorry).
Only if Bob's your uncle and Carol Reed your aunt. IMHO Anton Karas was the man who made it work. Joseph Cotten & Alida Valli, whilst excellent, were almost superfluous. Magic film though. I'm not unhappy to be a namesake. I get a bit of ribbing occasionally. Blimey, I'm showing my age
Many thanks for all the helpful, constructive and humorous replies.
I perhaps should have said that this is a commercial vehicle. I'm not trying to put a Moggie in a hen coop. The vehicle cab height is 4.04m after maximum reduction. Current threshold height is c3.85m Letting air out of tyres, fitting smaller wheels/tyres, compressing springs is not an option. No amount of tibs of car body filler, biffers/sprogs (?) etc are going to make the slightest difference to a 165T gvw vehicle. I'll try a scabbler, if no good I'll break out the offending areas and remake to suit. Something akin to this:
Just a word of warning WRT these scrabblers - they don't work, or to put it into context, they do work, provided you only want to remove a millimetre or two and have got plenty of time. We hired one to take a crown out of a floor and had it all day and didn't manage to take 2mm off, in the end we just poured 20 bags of self levelling compound around he edges to make it flat.
If you are looking to take off anything like 20mm then you are wasting your money, the one we hired was about 6 times the size of that one in the link - a big industrial type and it was crap.
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