Food Cart Project Part XXXVI: Raising the Roof

The past couple weekends have involved getting the roof canopy finished, and moved into place. I'd built the basic structure a few months back, and with the hood and fan in place, I was finally able to start attaching the corrugated steel:

Of course, a notch had to be cut out to accomodate the fan...

It took four of us to hoist it into place. It was an awkward job that involved several ladders, but took us all of five minutes...

I've got it on supports which put it at about a two degree angle:

I'll probably rig up some sort of soffit on there to keep the wind from getting under the canopy, which is not attached by a whole lot. As far as overhang, there's about eight inches on the sides, and around eighteen on either end. Not a ton, but probably just enough:

Here it is from above. This gives you a better idea of how it fits with the fan. The piece of corrugated on the lower right corner goes back on once I've caulked the front and side of the fan...

I also put in a call to Chris, an electrician who was recommended to me by Dale, who installed the hood and fan. Chris has some time in January, so the electrical will soon be getting dialed in. That should be pretty straightforward, I don't imagine it'll be much more than a one day job for him. Once I have a date for that nailed down, I think it'll be time to start calling around to cart pods and see who might have some space for a Burmese cart!

Food Cart Project Part XXXV: Hood Installation

I met up with my hood installation guy, Dale Barron, and one of his employees, Israel, this weekend to get the exhaust hood and fan into place. The hood was mounted directly against the wall, into the studs, using angle aluminum:

A hole was then cut into the ceiling through to the roof:

Up on the roof we have the curb, which the fan itself mounts to:

Once the curb was all set up, the hood was pulled back down and the ductwork was welded in:

The hood then went back up, and the ductwork was attached to the curb before mounting the fan:

Here we have the more or less completed cooking wall:

Another view of that, through the service window:

Here's a detail of one of the service window Buddhas:

The next big step, which probably won't happen until the holidays, is getting the electrical work done, and apart from getting the roof canopy into place, that's pretty much the last step before finding a spot in a pod to rent and getting this thing operational.