Building again

Plenty to write about this week. Construction has begun on our new barn.

The barn site with trees cleaned up, ready for construction!

We started Saturday the 18th with a little site preparation and tried to set poles. The first side of the barn did not go well. It was interesting, but that's not always good! The corner hole, which we thought would be the worst, actually dug cleanly and quickly got to four feet deep. That's when it got interesting. There are ten poles on each side of the barn counting the corners, and we were only able to drill holes for three of the first ten. In total, we hit solid concrete in three holes, and three had hard shale the post hole digger couldn't get through. Once we got to the other side of the barn the holes drilled pretty well. In many of the holes we dug up bricks, some of them whole. We don't know the exact details of what was here in the past, but from what we've heard, the Lehigh Concrete plant had worker housing on parts of our farm and some nicer houses with a tennis court and swimming pool. Apparently they either hauled these houses away or bulldozed them when the plant closed in the 1930s. Based on what we found in the holes while we were digging, it looks like they bulldozed something on the spot where we're building the barn. At least we didn't hit any water lines.

At the end of day 1: one side has all the poles set, the other...not so much.



   And the next day it snowed. Seven and a half inches.

We let the snow melt Monday and got back to work on Tuesday. It was muddy, but workable. The guys who are helping us with the building had to settle for me as the help, but we made it through two days of construction without Brian. They used a jackhammer to get purchase in the hard shale holes, and we used angle iron to bolt poles to the concrete in the other holes.

At the end of the second day: all the holes dug, all the poles set, and headers up on both sides

At the end of the third day: braces on the poles, tongue and groove finished on one side and about half finished on the other, the trusses were also delivered this day and we marked them and cut purlins so we could set trusses the following day. High winds postponed the truss-setting, but we got that done Monday.

After four days of work: the trusses were all set and braced and the purlins were in place. We called in reinforcements for this day, but I was impressed with how fast the five guys had this done.

These pictures show the current state of the project after five days of work. Everything is ready for the metal roof, which will be started Monday. We will still need to finish the inside of the barn, have curtains installed and run electricity and water, but the shell of the building should be finished this week.