New pole barn smashed to pieces....

[kude]

"I got a little side tracked while waiting for the insurance people to get out here to let me know what they would and would not cover. While I was waiting I decided to go ahead and take out all the trees around the barn that were within 40 feet or so just to keep this from happening again in the future. I had already decided to take out several at the back corner anyway so I could do proper grading but I was going to do that once the barn was finished. I figured this would be a good time to do it since I was burning anyway and what's another 10 to 15 trees when you add it all up. "

Good idea. After seeing how much damage a falling tree can do (one flattened my pick up in an ice storm) I don't let trees grow close to the house or buildings.

 

[kude]

I havnt heard of the ciggers anywhere but on here, what are they like?

When I was a kid, chiggers were an issue when working in the garden (northern Illinois) with shorts. You learn not to wear shorts in the garden or in tall grass. This probably is one of the reasons people mow the grass.

I once picked up a tuna can in the grass by a burn pile, it was a wasp nest, that was unpleasant with their attack. Wasps make nests almost anywhere. I noticed this spring wasps made a nest in the frame of the FEL on the 755 closest to the operator's station. Now if you don't mess with them, they usually won't attack you. I couldn't really use the FEL without agitating them somewhat, so I sprayed them just to be safe from attack.

When you're young you think shooting at a bumble bee with a BB gun is fun until they start biting you on the top of your head. You learn to not bother the bees, wasps etc and they leave you alone. Only when they nest too close to where you will be, do you need to spray.

 

[mx842]

When I was a kid, chiggers were an issue when working in the garden (northern Illinois) with shorts. You learn not to wear shorts in the garden or in tall grass. This probably is one of the reasons people mow the grass.

I once picked up a tuna can in the grass by a burn pile, it was a wasp nest, that was unpleasant with their attack. Wasps make nests almost anywhere. I noticed this spring wasps made a nest in the frame of the FEL on the 755 closest to the operator's station. Now if you don't mess with them, they usually won't attack you. I couldn't really use the FEL without agitating them somewhat, so I sprayed them just to be safe from attack.

When you're young you think shooting at a bumble bee with a BB gun is fun until they start biting you on the top of your head. You learn to not bother the bees, wasps etc and they leave you alone. Only when they nest too close to where you will be, do you need to spray.

I hear ya.....but have to say that a nest of bees anywhere will get the spray, high pressure water hose or fire from h@ll if they are discovered around here.
wasp are different than yellow jackets, wasp build nest above ground and yellow jackets build their home in the ground. You are more likely to see a wasp nest before you get stung than it would be with the yellow jacket but no matter they all get the same treatment.

Oftentimes wasp do build nest in places you can't see them and you will find them only after you bend over to hook up your trailer and they have decided to build a home in the tongue. Or, behind the board you are about to paint, under the hood or trunk of the car or truck you don't use everyday. The nest that are out in the open are only a fraction of the nest that are built in out of the way places and the builders are just waiting for some poor country boy to wonder by so they can sharpen up their stingers on your poor ol' self.

I do them in every time I find them because the nest that don't get knocked down will lead to hundreds maybe even thousands of bees later on down the road. Most of the wasp die in the winter but some make it through by hibernating in warm places but they don't matter much if they do survive because they are nothing without the queen.

The mated queen bees normally make it through and they are the ones that start new nest. Some young queens that didn't mate before winter hits are still filled with eggs and if they make it through the winter they will find a suitable place to build a nest. They spray a mist like substance into the air that lets any male worker bees that survived also know where she is then they mate and start a new nest, hive, colony, what ever you want to call it. I just call it trouble and killem' with fire where ever.....whenever I find them. I think I would rather have a rattlehead copper mocccisan as a pet than a wasp, hornet or yellow jacket.:laughing:

 

[mx842]

Well I'm finally back to square one. Or back to where I was the day after the storm. I didn't think there was as much damage as there was but I had to rebuild over half the barn. I had to tear out the whole front wall, most all of the left and part of the right wall too because it was bent and twisted so badly. I also went ahead and put 2x6's in between the double top wall headers and this helped stiffen and straighten up all the walls in the process.

I was going to build my own truss system but I have gotten so far behind I bought them already made and they should be here in about 2 weeks. I was planning on this to be a 6 month project but with all my delays and problems I had with the steel beam I installed and now the storm I'll be lucky to have it done by spring. I'm not really rushed for time but I'm at the point I'm getting fed up with problems and just want it done.

Before and after pics:

 

[SPIKER]

well looks like came a long nice bet your glad you weren't farther ahead when it fell..

mark

 

[MotorSeven]

MX, that's coming along great...I like the trolly lift I beam...nice touch!

 

[mx842]

well looks like came a long nice bet your glad you weren't farther ahead when it fell..

mark

Yeah, it's a good thing it came when it did because I was going to start putting truss on it on Monday. I had everything all lined up and even had some help to build and place them on the roof. It was harder to get everything to line up the second time around and probably would have been faster to just tear it all down and start all over, Everything was all twisted because I guess the wood got wet and then as it lay there it took on a whole new look. But with my ratchet pull straps and a little cussing I managed to pull everything back in to some kind of order. Another problem was the lumber had dried out on the building and it was smaller than the stuff I was putting up some of the new stuff was a full 1/8" thicker or wider than the wood that was already up. It looked kind of funny when I nailed the two together and hopefully it too will dry out and even out.

 

[mx842]

MX, that's coming along great...I like the trolly lift I beam...nice touch!

Thanks! That beam cost me a lot of problems and time to put up and I hope it will stay up there long enough to get some current down there so I can weld it in place. Right now it's just sitting there with a few bolts holding it together on the ends of each beam. The uprights are bolted to the footings but it is still kind of shaky if you push on it hard. The bolts must be doing a little because that tree hit one of the corners and slid down it when it came down through the whole mess.

The building is mainly for me to work out of I want to do light fabrication and powder coating in there if I ever get it done. The beam is so I can load and unload stuff at the big door and one of my ovens doesn't have a door, you have to lift the top up off the burner table. It's kind of hard to explain but I came up with this idea a couple years ago when I was building another oven and having problems with the doors opening and closing and leaking out all my heat. When I'm done I'll post up some pics of the whole thing in operation so you can get a better feel for how it all works.

 

[mx842]

Well I guess it's about time for a progress report. I have been spending most of my time cleaning up the blow downs and have just about got all the trees that landed on stuff cleaned up. I have also been cleaning up the woods where the last count was 92 trees down and another 15 or so that are leaning and will probably die in the near future. I'm going to leave them standing for now cause it's no need to push them over cause I have more firewood than I can burn over the next several years.

I just finished burning most of the piles of stumps and brush and only have 3 or 4 to go but it has been raining so much the woods are pretty much impassable any more so I'll just let it be for now and hopefully it will dry up sooner or later and I can clean up the rest. I was hoping I could have finished before the last rain because the ground had started to tighten up enough to work on and my roofer buddy left his skid steer here for me to use which really helped. It sure was a lot faster with that machine and the way I figure it saved me about a years worth of slave work with my ol Bronco and chain saw. If the last rain would have held off a couple days I would have been able to burn everything around the house and barn and most all of the other trees that are scattered all over my 10 ac of what used to be thick forest. As it stands I still need to shake out the burn piles and move what is left into the other piles I didn't get to but last weeks rain took it's toll and it is to the point where I am doing more damage than I am good so I'll let it be for now and hope my roofer buddy is still brain dead and lets me use his machine again when it drys up.:laughing:

Messing around with all those trees has not left me with much time to work on the barn but I have got the truss up and the perlins nailed on. The medal should go on the next day we get that it is not raining. I also finished framing my lean to shed off the side of the barn and that too is ready for roof medal. Maybe I'll have siding on it by Christmas if my money holds out and a concrete floor by spring.

 

[mx842]

Oh I forgot my picture of the barn. I was going to take some pics of the woods and new roof on the house but it's been raining so.

 

[Kyle_in_Tex]

looking good!

 

[mx842]

I haven't done an update lately so I guess today is the day. I still don't have siding on the building because I wanted to get my floor poured before I did anything else. It started out being a simple task and at the time I had the money to do it but I got side tracked and decided to go with a slab heating system. This project started out as a simple storage shed and a dry place to work in but now has exploded into a full scale construction project.

In a way I'm glad I did get side tracked a little because it gave me a chance to think about a few other things that will be better in the end once they are all put in place. I decided to put as much of my wiring in the floor as I could especially the heavy stuff because the runs will be shorter and the savings in wire will more than pay for the conduit to put it in, and it will be out of the way where critters can't get to it.

I also decided to rough in an area for a possible bathroom if I ever decide I want one. I did run into a major setback when I started to dig out for the conduits and plumbing pipes. When I cleared the trees out of the building site you may remember I used my old truck to pull the trees over. I managed to get them all out but in doing so I must have broke off a lot of large roots and some of the holes got filled in with topsoil that I missed when I borrowed my friends tractor to strip the pad. One side of the pad was high and I cut the dirt out of that side and used it as fill on the other side. I cut down almost 11/2 feet and the dirt looked good and there were no soft spots.

When I dug my piers I did run into several places where there were a lot of roots but just figured they were just isolated cases and put the piers in. Once the building was up and I had been working in it for almost a year the floor was so hard you couldn't drive a steel spike into it. Then as I was diging trenches in the dirt and gravel once I got down about 4 or 5 inches it was soft and after digging in an area I could go back in an hour or so and there would be wet spots starting to form and in some places there was water seeping up and actually puddling in spots. This has been one of the wettest periods in history around here and I guess the ground water is so high that the old stump holes that had been covered up filled up and was holding water.

I started to dig around in a couple of these places and the more I dug the worst it got. What started out to be a small wet spot on one end of the building ended up being a major excavation effort and before it was over I had shoveled and area 15' on either side of the whole right hand pier line the whole 40' length of the building. In some places I had to dig down 4' or 5' to get to good solid soil. When I was done it looked like one of those archeological digs you see on the history channel. I took almost two tandum loads of gravel to back fill the area that I had dug out with my trusty little shovel. This ***** ordeal took me almost 3 weeks to dig out and fill back in. Then I found one or two other spots that I thought were going to be the same way but ended up not being as bad and only took me three days to dig them out and fill them back in with gravel.

 

[mx842]

Once this excavation project was done I started putting in my plumbing, electrical, placing insulation around the outer edges of the building getting the floor up to sub grade. Doing this by myself has it's problems as no matter what I start to do there is always something else I have to do before I can proceed or I have to dig up a section again because I forgot one thing or another.:laughing: Needless to say most everything I have done here lately has to be redone for one reason or another or I just change my mind because I think of a better way to make something work.

 

[mx842]

I also have started the prework for the heating system. I have almost everything I need to put it in and once all the other slab work is done I'll start my tubing runs. I found a couple pieces of 3/4 that I put together to use as a backing board to mount all my equipment on and I have started to put some of the parts together and hopefully soon I'll have this part of the project done so I can go out and make some more money to be able to do my pour.

I also have been doing a little grading around the outside of the building in hopes the water can drain away a little better than it has been doing. This is all I have time for now but I'll be back.

 

[Dean S]

I know it's well after the original yell-ow jacket postings, but I feel for ya! Try this- the aluminum chlorohydrate found in most (but not all) roll on deodorants/antiperspirants nuetralizes the venom. Has to be roll on, not stick. The liquid has to get into the wound. It's the same stuff in the bee sting relief OTC meds. We never have that stuff around, but always had some roll on in the house.
If applied while the pore or puncture is still open, usually no longer than 20 minutes, it nuetralizes much of the venom. Of course, the quicker, the better.
Even the last yellow jacket sting in the arm pit, quickly went from the usual yell-ow jacket pain to feeling like I had just a light bruise there. Since I was home, I had the aluminum chlorohydrate roll on slathered in my arm pit within minutes of smashing the bugger.
I no longer use a roll on, but you can bet I always keep a Ban roll on deodorant in each safety kit. The youngins make sure it's in there before we roam!
A co-worker allergic to bee stings passed it on to me from his doctor. Of course it doesn't replace an EPI pen, for those who need one, but it does help. A lot.
Just had to pass it on. Hope it helps.

 

[mx842]

I know it's well after the original yell-ow jacket postings, but I feel for ya! Try this- the aluminum chlorohydrate found in most (but not all) roll on deodorants/antiperspirants nuetralizes the venom. Has to be roll on, not stick. The liquid has to get into the wound. It's the same stuff in the bee sting relief OTC meds. We never have that stuff around, but always had some roll on in the house.
If applied while the pore or puncture is still open, usually no longer than 20 minutes, it nuetralizes much of the venom. Of course, the quicker, the better.
Even the last yellow jacket sting in the arm pit, quickly went from the usual yell-ow jacket pain to feeling like I had just a light bruise there. Since I was home, I had the aluminum chlorohydrate roll on slathered in my arm pit within minutes of smashing the bugger.
I no longer use a roll on, but you can bet I always keep a Ban roll on deodorant in each safety kit. The youngins make sure it's in there before we roam!
A co-worker allergic to bee stings passed it on to me from his doctor. Of course it doesn't replace an EPI pen, for those who need one, but it does help. A lot.
Just had to pass it on. Hope it helps.

Who would have thunk that deodorant would kill the pain of a bee attack? Thanks, it is good to know though, now I can get attacked by bees and smell good too.:laughing: Usually don't have much trouble with yellow jackets until late in the summer or fall but I'll stock up for sure.