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The original plywood floor was laid on top of joist
hangers. Since there was no base under the floor, other than
the dirt ground, the joists rotted in less than 5 years. In
1988, it was time to replace the floor with better material.
Learning our lesson, we decided that a concrete floor was the
obvious choice, even at a higher cost than other alternatives.
The plan was to pay someone to haul several tons
of sand to the top of the hill, dump it in the building (of,
course, after we spent 1 month ripping out the old floor), then
bring in the cement truck.
Rick Trembour lays Visqueen on top of the dirt floor. On
top of that we'll throw the sand then pour the concrete
later.
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The truck hauling sand to the
hill. Ooops. As he was crossing the land bridge over the
culvert, he went over a bit too far to the right. His
load shifted and he got stuck. He also broke the culvert
pipe which we replaced 13 years later.
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So, he calls in a front-end loader to
lift his rear-end out of the culvert.
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"I ain't going to drive my truck
up that hill". So, he dumps his load in our parking lot
- 500 feet from where we wanted it.
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So, the next project is to haul the sand
up the hill in Keith's trailer
with his tractor- many loads of sand. That takes a couple
of weeks. Keith shovels a load
into the warm-up room.
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Keith shovels more as Dan watches.
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Dan
shovels a load into the observing room.
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A couple weeks later, we contract to
have the cement truck make his delivery. After the sand
truck debacle, we're worried about the cement truck, especially
if he would make it up the steep hill. No problem.
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He just backed it up to the door and let the stuff slide.
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The load being dumped into the observing room. Looks like
we put reinforcing bar on top of the sand. Smart move.
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Smoothing the cement out before it sets.
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We found that the floor was too low because
it was difficult to observe with the scope pointed overhead.
So, the following year, we installed a wood floor back
on top of the concrete floor. Not rot this time, it's
in great shape, over 10 years after installation.
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Andy Winzer sweeps the new floor.
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