The Craftmans Shop > New from Old
Resurrecting a Portakabin
wgw:
Portacabins don't last well, I would put a few posts up with the round sheets as a roof, just to keep the rain off the cabins. To late now ,but a good source of rounded sheets for pig arcs etc. is old grain silos. We have two cabins, flat roofs. These were made for accommodation units on a oil platform yard and are well made. Roof started seeping last year ( only about40 yrs. old ) .By far the cheapest remedy was roof over in steel sheet on 4x2 timbers.
awemawson:
WGW
- pig ark sheets are not only too curved, but have insufficient reach - I have a couple here unused at the moment. No grain silos unfortunately - the nearest one has been converted into a letting holiday home :clap:
awemawson:
Having at long last finished chicken shed #2 this morning I could give serious consideration to jacking up the Portakabin to a more level state.
Jack leg 'B' is the most accessible so I thought that I'd start there - it is also fairly close to the entrance door, and as years back I cast a concrete threshold abutting the doorway I would be able to see if they stuck together or (hopefully) moved independently. However close examination revealed one of those 'gottcha' situations. The cranked pin that pins the inner and outer sliding elements of the jack leg had been put in from the wrong side, so that if the jack were placed where intended, you couldn't remove the pin when the initial weight was taken. A bit of innovative jack placement and application of odd angles of jacking got the pin out and back the right way round and the leg extended by 2" - and the good news was that the threshold concrete stayed put as the cabin moved upwards :thumbup:
The other legs 'C' and 'D' had the pin the right way round, however the arris rail of the fence through which I was doing this keyhole surgery was exactly and precisely where the jack handle wanted to be :bang: A bit of rigging timber baulks and bent jack handles overcame the problem :thumbup:
Leg 'C' went up it's required 4" with no real problem, and when I came to leg 'D' it was already up in the air taking no weight, so the cabin chassis must be less flexible than I'd thought.
So is it now level? Well it's certainly MORE level than it was but no it's not level. I'm going to set up the tripod and laser level this afternoon it the rain holds off - I expect that the tops of the jack legs are now roughly level but the structure of the cabin is a bit crook !
awemawson:
This morning I prepared the timbers that will have the curved corrugated sheets screwed down to. They need the rebate to accommodate a drip strip that having been fibre glassed is no longer easy to remove.
These started off as 6" x 2" treated timbers used as shuttering for the external concrete for the tractor shed. I cut them down to 4" x 2" and cut the 1.5" x 3/4" rebate then gave them a good coat of creosote - hopefully they will be dry enough to handle in a few days when the sheets arrive.
awemawson:
06:30 this morning brought the delivery of the specially curved roofing sheets - shame my Forklift is away for repair (forward clutch pack) as this lot were very heavy for two of us to get off the lorry.
They'll have to stay there for some time, as it's far too windy to move them at the moment, and anyway best to wait for the Fork Lift's Return.
Just as well he came early - I wanted to mow the big field today and when on the tractor there is no way I'd hear mobile phones , gate alarms or delivery people yelling !
4 1/2 hours and 20 litres of red diesel later it's had it's first cut of the year to stunt the rush growth using that big flail mower that I rebuilt last year - it worked extremely well :thumbup:
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