We recently had the dam on our pond/lake/stock tank reconstructed after it washed out about 5 years ago. The new dam has a spill way at the end. Since we're making preparations to build a house up on the hill above the lake which will require daily driving over the dam and spillway we're trying to find the best options of crossing the spillway. While talking to the rep from the local electric co-op about our plans while he was out helping us decide on the best rout to get power up the hill, he mentioned that a man he did a recent job for had an old bridge that he wanted to sell that would be perfect to span our spill way. Me being technology oriented proceeded to use the rough directions to the bridge site that the guy gave me to find it on google maps' satellite view.
After verifying that that was indeed the location and the bridge, we drove out to the site today to take a look at it. In my opinion, the bridge is absolutely beautiful in the way only rusty old works from times past can be, and true to it's time period it is built to last forever and then some.
The question now becomes is it feasible to move this bridge 30 miles, and if so, how much is it likely to cost? Since these questions are impossible to answer without pics, without further ado here they are:
If you'll notice from the third pic, the bridge is already sitting on what appears to be the from of an old truck or trailer of some sort, although only one end is still up.
My idea was to just lift the bridge up, bolt a couple of axles under it and secure a hitch of some sort to the front and pull the bridge down the highway like a parade float, at night or in the wee hours of the morning to avoid most traffic obstacles, of course.
Now, the other concern is that the bridge was damaged slightly in moving it from wherever it used to rest to it's current location:
I'm thinking that damage can probably be mostly corrected with liberal use of a hydraulic ram of some sort.
So, good people, what are your thoughts? Would we be better of to just buy the frame from a mobile home (Which we can get for what the person selling them would have received from a scrap dealer) and construct the bridge from scratch?
After verifying that that was indeed the location and the bridge, we drove out to the site today to take a look at it. In my opinion, the bridge is absolutely beautiful in the way only rusty old works from times past can be, and true to it's time period it is built to last forever and then some.
The question now becomes is it feasible to move this bridge 30 miles, and if so, how much is it likely to cost? Since these questions are impossible to answer without pics, without further ado here they are:
If you'll notice from the third pic, the bridge is already sitting on what appears to be the from of an old truck or trailer of some sort, although only one end is still up.
My idea was to just lift the bridge up, bolt a couple of axles under it and secure a hitch of some sort to the front and pull the bridge down the highway like a parade float, at night or in the wee hours of the morning to avoid most traffic obstacles, of course.
Now, the other concern is that the bridge was damaged slightly in moving it from wherever it used to rest to it's current location:
I'm thinking that damage can probably be mostly corrected with liberal use of a hydraulic ram of some sort.
So, good people, what are your thoughts? Would we be better of to just buy the frame from a mobile home (Which we can get for what the person selling them would have received from a scrap dealer) and construct the bridge from scratch?