New (very old building) shop

[Lynn]

Promised more updates on the shop. Not sure how to update this. So much has happened, and thankfully, I changed directions on this. You will see why.

Have to explain the layout of the building. It is 45 feet wide. The East end is square. The West end is not. The South wall runs about 125 feet, and the North wall about 105 feet. So, for you math guys, it is a left trapezoid with one wall perpendicular to the two parallel walls.

I had planned on using just the West end as a two bay work space with one lift and a flat bay area. Would have been about 1400 feet, albeit in a bit of an odd shape.

The floor was already concrete with virtually no cracks, except around the pole I removed making it a clear span area. The flooring just to the east is the original wood floor (building was used for coal storage in the 1920’s). 2 x 12 joists on 16 inch centers with 2 x 6 flooring planks. Previous owner was driving cars on it, so it was plenty strong. But, I wanted to wall off my work shop area so that I could heat it in the winter. I can stand the summer heat, but not the winter cold. The only ventilation for the crawl space was out to the shop area. You can see the crawl space in the first three pics below. First one is looking East from the North end of my work area. The building has no crawl space ventilation on either side. Well, not DESIGNED ventilation; but plenty of air gaps in the tin siding on the North. It was VERY damp under the wood floor. I mean really damp. I bought a bunch of steel grates to place strategically in the floor and was getting ready to wall that area off. Then I got greedy. Wouldn’t MORE shop space be better? Of course it would. So, the next plan was to remove about 1/3 of that wood floor. I planned to concrete it on the same level as the work area, so that I could store welding equipment, gantry crane etc. and be able to roll them over to the work area.

At first, I started pulling nails one at a time. Screw that, get the circular saw, and cut each floor board even with one side of the joist, and just use it as leverage to pull up the floor boards. Fortunately, one of my brothers was able to come over that Saturday and help. After removing about a third of that third of the floor, I noticed something black on the ground under the joists. I poked it with a pry bar, and found it to be a puddle of water. Talk about damp. No, not damp; wet. After removing enough of the flooring and joists that I could access the puddle, I stuck my pry bar all the way in. Didn’t hit bottom. Had my brother hand me a 6 foot piece of conduit; stuck it in. Still didn’t hit bottom. WTH??
We had uncovered a freakin artesian well. Pics below. No wonder it was always so damp under there. Went to Ace and bought a sump pump with float. Pumped it as dry as I could. Two nights later, we got ½ inch of rain. Thought I would go down to the shop and see if there was a couple more feet of water in the well. It was full again, after just ½ inch of rain. I have still not cleaned the well out completely (may find Jimmy Hoffa in there). There are pieces of wood at the bottom that are water logged. No telling what we will find when we finally clean it out. Hoping it was a wishing well. Photos of the well were taken about a week after we removed the flooring on that third. The well is bigger than it looks in pictures. It is 36 inches in diameter.

We have since discovered that this building was NOT the first structure on this site. However, it is apparent, they had no building codes to speak of in 1919, or someone just didn't pay attention. They built this building right over an existing well. I have discovered remnants of at least two footings from previous structures. We are less than 60 yards from the rail road tracks, which have been in the same place since before the land run in 1889. So, this may have been used as a spring fed water source for the trains. More to come.