The door is installed.

The door is positioned so that we can pour a concrete floor, if at a later date we want a one.  Meanwhile we'll add some road base to bring the floor up and eliminate the gaps at the bottoms of the sidewalls, and add a threshold under the door.

The barn contractor will put on the correct-colored corner pieces soon.  We'll clean out the trash & spare steel panels from inside, and move in the camping pop-up trailer, the dumping trailer, and the tractor.  Carl's stuff, rescued from the flooded storage in Longmont and from his basement, will be moved from the garage to the barn.  I get to park my truck inside again.

And since we don't expect more snow for a few days,  I hope to get the trench dug to get electric power to the barn.  A licensed electrician will install basic service, safely & according to code.  I'll put in lights and outlets myself.  Carl has loaned several fluorescent lights to the project.

21 November - It Looks Like a Barn

Temperature this morning was 15 degrees Fahrenheit, with a couple of inches of snow.  The crew delayed start until 8 o'clock to allow it to warm up; but by 10 o'clock the temp was only 14, and we had snow flurries all day.  A little breeze made it very cold!  They persisted, & competed their phase of the project by mid-afternoon.  While one of the men lives in Black Forest, the other three live in Leadville; they came down to augment the barn company crews during the rebuilding surge after the Black Forest Fire, and now they can move on to other projects.

It remains to install the 18'x10' door, spread more road base on the floor, and run power and Ethernet out to the building.  The door is scheduled for Tuesday.  The outside corner pieces were ordered in red instead of tan, so they will be installed when the replacements arrive.

By the way, the barn is about 130' in back of the house, so one won't ignite the other in a fire.  (According to our fire code, any structure within 100' must be considered when determining whether the home must have a sprinkler system.)

20 November - Cover the Frame

The crew started again at 7 AM.  They quickly finished a little framing, then draped rolls of insulation from the peak down.  It's thin, but is rated at R-10.  The metal roof & siding is 26-gauge steel.The crew split in two, and roof and wall went up simultaneously.

The inside face of the insulation is a plastic film.

By 4 PM both halves of the roof and both sides were done.

Work on the back began, but it wasn't finished by dark.

19 November - The Framework takes shape

First make the side walls stiff.

Then raise the roof trusses.

Tie the trusses into a solid structure.

The crew worked into deep dusk again.  The next morning it was clear that the framework was almost complete.

18 November - Real Construction Begins

At 7:20 AM, while we were still lazing about in our pajamas, the first truck arrived with lumber for the framework.  Most pieces are 16-20' long.

Soon after, a 3-man crew arrived and started laying out precisely the pole positions for this pole barn.

Drilling the post holes was easy on the east side, but in the west side, where the hard clay has settled for millennia, they really had to put weight on the auger.

Meanwhile, the roof trusses arrived on a 41' trailer.  The driver wasn't as good as he thought he was, but after many back & forths, and my moving pallets out of the way for him, and the foreman guiding him, he got the trusses reasonably close to the barn site.

This crew demands precision within 1/8".

They tell me this trailer holds all the steel "skin" for the roof and walls.

End of the first day:

Site Preparation

Thursday 26 September the skid-steer began making a level pad for the barn.  First he cleared a bunch of trees, from pencil size to 8"diameter.

From 1 p.m. until dusk he scurried around, cutting and filling, occasionally checking progress with a laser level.

When he was satisfied, he spread several inches of roadbase to form the floor of the barn.

And our pad is ready for construction.

It's over 100' behind the house.  It will be 30'x40' to hold Carl's dumping trailer, the pop-up camper, and Carl's tractor.  Now we're waiting for construction, which will start in about a month.

Beginning construction of the barn

Go to beginning of fire blog to see tree removal and causeway widening for the beginning of the barn project.

The big tree that had to be cut down to prevent the fire from spreading was in the way of the proposed location of the barn.  Our neighbor wanted the wood to make furniture, so he borrowed a large tractor to move the wood from our yard across the street to his yard.  This tractor is bigger than Carl's and has landscape tires on the back (note no large treads--it is smooth for working on lawns).

 The log is so heavy, it brings the back right tire into the air about a foot!  Steve rearranged the log so he could drive more safely--on all four tires.

 Oops!!  Unfortunately, the ground was not level and the log fell off the tractor onto the side of the causeway.

 Here Steve is moving the log at last.  Notice he is still uneven--the rear tire is up in the air.  Below he is picking up the next load.  And it is getting dusk and he has the lights on.

 He made 4 trips to take all the wood to his place.  It is getting darker and the loads were lighter and easier to load and transport.

Dad is adding road base to the expanded causeway and trying to make it firmer and bigger for all types of deliveries.

The ground is now clear of the tree, except for the stump which the firefighters left when they cut the tree down.  There are a lot of tractor tracks--we had plenty of rain and the soil was soft and the loads were heavy so lots of tracks.

 Because of the rain and repairs to the causeway (because of the log disaster above) we had damage to the causeway.

 Dad fixed the damage with water bars and more fill dirt and road base.

 Stacie, the water bars are held in place with the sticks I rescued from you (the ones you were going to throw away!)

 We had to get 30 cu. ft. (supposedly 38 tons) of road base to help level the barn and for the interior floor of the barn.  Here is the 2nd load.  The first load came on a 10 ton truck (8 tons were delivered and he drove in), but for the 2nd and 3rd loads he came in a 15 ton truck, dual axle and backed in from the street.  Here he is starting the backing.  He walked the causeway beforehand and Dad told him where it was soft, new dirt, etc.

 Unloading the 15 tons near the former tree that we had removed a couple nights ago.

 Dad limbed up the tree several feet and still the truck hit the branches.

 Here is the causeway after two loads of road base were delivered over it.  It seems to be holding, but it is very soft and we have quite deep ruts.  After all deliveries have been done we will fill in the ruts and level it out and rake out the tracks as much as possible.  Carl, Dad wants you to know that your idea of cutting the tree down, and straightening out the roadway is a good one.  This driver did a lot of straightening out of the road when he drove back and forth.  The dual axle truck had a much longer wheel base and needed a straighter roadway.  Note the small pile of road base (to the left) we still have leftover to use to fill in ruts, etc.  We'll probably need more, but we can use the causeway and may wait until next spring when we can get more ruts out and level out the roadway.

 Here comes load #3.

 

 Note the pile behind Dad.  It is 38.25 tons and is just to the left of where the barn will be--up the hill.  The prep work will be done this week (so we were told) and then we have to wait 4-6 weeks for the construction of the barn. So more photos to come.

 This is behind the sheds, between the dumping site and the causeway & street.  Note the deep ruts--the dirt here is again very soft, even though we have used this as a roadway for several years.