Gimmie Shelter
Feb. 15th, 2008 05:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kevin_standleeAs I wrote here, the lean-to awning that Lisa built to shelter the side of the old family homestead collapsed while she was away due to buildup of snow. After we dealt with the fallen tree branches elsewhere, Lisa decided to have a closer look at the shelter and see what we could salvage. We got some pleasant surprises.
List cut a hole in the bottom of the tarp (it was still full of water, which was part of the reason it had failed; the previous drains had become plugged with debris). Water poured out. She climbed under the collapsed awning and pushed. Then she had me join her and push harder. With a shriek of protesting PVC pipe joints, the shelter hove back up into place. Amazingly, most of the twelve vertical supports had not broken -- the cable ties holding them to the metal anchors had broken and the legs had simply slid away under the weight of the waterlogged roof. With the weight gone, we could push the supports back into place.
These are views from both ends of the shelter after we pushed it back into place. The view on the right is facing east, where you can see my van parked on the right and the door to the trailer open on the left. The building across the street is the Mehama Community Church. The stuff piled up here is various bits of pipe and wood and such from work around the property, including the remains of the temporary shelter over the trailer whose collapse led to Lisa falling off the roof a few weeks ago. We went to a place in Salem that builds temporary metal buildings suitable for RV shelters and got a quote of $2325 for a building that will shelter the trailer, but we don't have the money to order it yet.
At least two of the legs actually did break and need to be replaced, and some of the cross-braces broke as well. Lisa thinks that we should be able to fix one leg at a time. With twelve supports, there is some redundancy in the design, so you can take one leg at at time out and replace it. For now, the structure is standing on only nine or ten good legs as it is. If another storm comes along, the whole thing will fall down again pretty quickly.
The biggest problem, however, is that the roof tarp itself is badly ripped and needs to be replaced entirely. Assuming we can find a tarp that Lisa wants, getting the old one down and the new one up is going to be an all-day job. Whether we'll actually get it done this trip is an open question.
So it looks like the shelter, while bowed, isn't a write-off after all, which says a lot for the resilience of the original design. And even with a torn tarp, it is still partially protecting the building from further water damage, and that's a good thing.
List cut a hole in the bottom of the tarp (it was still full of water, which was part of the reason it had failed; the previous drains had become plugged with debris). Water poured out. She climbed under the collapsed awning and pushed. Then she had me join her and push harder. With a shriek of protesting PVC pipe joints, the shelter hove back up into place. Amazingly, most of the twelve vertical supports had not broken -- the cable ties holding them to the metal anchors had broken and the legs had simply slid away under the weight of the waterlogged roof. With the weight gone, we could push the supports back into place.
These are views from both ends of the shelter after we pushed it back into place. The view on the right is facing east, where you can see my van parked on the right and the door to the trailer open on the left. The building across the street is the Mehama Community Church. The stuff piled up here is various bits of pipe and wood and such from work around the property, including the remains of the temporary shelter over the trailer whose collapse led to Lisa falling off the roof a few weeks ago. We went to a place in Salem that builds temporary metal buildings suitable for RV shelters and got a quote of $2325 for a building that will shelter the trailer, but we don't have the money to order it yet.
At least two of the legs actually did break and need to be replaced, and some of the cross-braces broke as well. Lisa thinks that we should be able to fix one leg at a time. With twelve supports, there is some redundancy in the design, so you can take one leg at at time out and replace it. For now, the structure is standing on only nine or ten good legs as it is. If another storm comes along, the whole thing will fall down again pretty quickly.
The biggest problem, however, is that the roof tarp itself is badly ripped and needs to be replaced entirely. Assuming we can find a tarp that Lisa wants, getting the old one down and the new one up is going to be an all-day job. Whether we'll actually get it done this trip is an open question.
So it looks like the shelter, while bowed, isn't a write-off after all, which says a lot for the resilience of the original design. And even with a torn tarp, it is still partially protecting the building from further water damage, and that's a good thing.
