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Resurrection of a CFEI 100 KVA Induction Furnace

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awemawson:
Thanks for the comments chaps.

I don't think that it's condensation from the roof - if you look at the picture above that shows the Acco drain in the concrete floor as is at the moment, there is no damp on the welding shop floor and the welding shop side has the exact same roof construction and the sliding door between has been open for weeks so the same climatic conditions.

This re-inforces my suspicion that the foundry slab has no membrane.

When and if this spell of rain stops I'm going to :

A/ Clear the earth as far back from the slab as possible - 2 or 3 foot probably

B/ Trench down beside the slab about 12 inches

C/ At the mid point of the wall dig a sump

D/ Temporarily install a mucky water sump pump and try and depress the local water table

If this works I'll go the whole hog and turn the trench into a french drain with a perforated pipe and shingle and properly install the pump though where to pump to is an issue at the moment. (Need to check levels but it's still raining hard so that's not happening just yet!)

Gadabout:
Andrew,
So why hasn't this dampness showed its ugly head before?
dedicated awemawson follower
Mark

awemawson:
As Pete said it has been pretty wet recently, but probably it has been pretty dire before, but the room has been packed shoulder to shoulder with bits being stored. So actually not a place I could get into regularly.

Don't forget that the original chiller unit had succumbed to storage, quite possibly due to the damp, and the Induction Furnace Driver metalwork was badly affected especially on the first foot of height. 

The building was really badly conceived (by me) - that slab was cut into rising ground with no drainage provision, no membrane in the floor, and I let the contractor get away with far too shallow a roof pitch.

. . . but we are where we are and I have to make the most of it !!

awemawson:
Boxing Day presented a 'weather window'. It only rained 4 mm on Christmas Eve, none at all on Christmas Day, and Boxing Day morning was predicted to be fine with a bit of rain in the afternoon, so time to start to solve the ground water problem with the foundry.

I decided to form a shallow ditch, or 'grip' as they are called in these parts, to allow water to flow away and past the building to lower down in the field, so I got the digger into position ready to start after breakfast.

Now traditionally early Boxing Day morning my friend Phil cuts the hedge for me on the main road outside the farm. He chooses this time as it pretty well guarantees a low traffic flow on the A21  which is a trunk road.

Phil is a very experienced ground worker and has dug footing and laid masses of concrete for me over the years, so it wasn't long before he evicted me from the cab and started making a very professional and far neater job than I could have hoped to achieve (well, OK, I'd hoped that this would happen  :clap:)

The plan is to form the grip and see how it performs - if it solves the issue very good, but if not there will be a 'phase two' where the grip gets 100mm perforated pipe covered in 20 mm pebbles as a french drain, and the pipe is trenched onwards into the farm yard and coupled to the existing field drain system (that takes the bore hole overflow incidentally)

What to do with all the spoil? Well there was a redundant 'goose pond' (the geese now being history) that needed removing - so the liner was broken up and the pond and surroundings filled with the spoil - there was quite a bit!

Heavy rain forecast for tomorrow so hopefully the grip will be tested ! The foundry floor is nice and dry, lets see what happens  :bugeye:

awemawson:
It looks like that 'grip' was dug just in time - we had rather a lot of rain last night and it was blowing a hooley  :bugeye:

My new rain gauge said 9.9 mm but I knew that we'd had far more than that - sure enough the sensor bucket had been blown away ! I must make a heavy base to screw it to.

Chaos this morning as we had two power cuts over night - first one about midnight was about an hour, but then one at 5 AM lasted until 10.30. Doing my rounds I find all fields flooded, and flooded more than I've ever seen it in the 13 years we've been here. It's the first time that I've seen a raging torrent - (The River Brede) entering the orchard having already crossed the road and is probably the main contributor to the flood.

A knock on 'collateral damage' issue is that our Klargester private sewage system is flooded - it pumps treated effluent into a local stream, but I think the stream is now at the same level as the body of the treatment unit and of course the power has been off for a long time so the pump hasn't been working. Hopefully the waters will recede over the day and once the level goes down the pump will stand a chance of restoring order.

Quite a bit of water entered the foundry - the vast majority via the roller shutter, the side where the grip is has suffered very little so it looks as though that's working. I'm really not at all surprised as it was an 'interesting' night from the weather perspective. One roof sheet 'overlap' has let some through but that's down to the very strong winds that we've had.

The rain was lashing down - I think we were predicted 50 mph gusts and from what was happening to my bedroom window I reckon we had them.

But it's not all gloom and despondency - all the sheep have got to higher ground so no wading about rescuing them.

But I'll have to invoke 'phase two' of that grip to let it empty via the field drains.

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