You've gotta just love NCWW!
About a month ago Salem (Eyekode) sent me a PM asking me if I had seen the posting on the Raleigh Craigslist for a free solar kiln. Nope, I hadn't seen it (it was about 2 hours old when I received Salem's PM), so I checked out the listing and was intrigued. The solar kiln pictured was the standard Virginia Tech design (one of the best and most popular designs), and the posting didn't say much about it other than that it was free, tall (14' tall), and that it would be suitable as a solar kiln or perhaps a greenhouse, but that it may need to be cut down for transportation. The posting also stated that insurance would be required from whomever moved it.
I have been thinking about building some solar kilns to augment my dehumidification kiln, and dedicate at least one of them for drying 8/4 quartersawn oak (it takes almost 4 months to kiln dry 8/4 oak). So the opportunity to get a jump start on this project was of real interest.
No phone number was listed in the posting, just the standard response via Craigslist, so I fired off a short response indicating my interest. A couple of days go by with no response, so I sent another e-mail response but from a different e-mail address, thinking that maybe my first mail was blocked by a spam filter or something. In my second mail, I kept it simple and stated my interest, the fact that I had the equipment necessary to move it, and that I could provide the required certificates of insurance.
The next day I receive a phone call from one of the asset managers at SAS in Cary. Turns out that they built a new building a year or so ago, and wanted it to be LEEDS certified. So they recycled a lot of the timber from the building site into wood for interior use, and built the solar kiln to dry it. Since the project was complete, they no longer needed the kiln and wanted it to go to a good home (they had previously offered it to a museum, NC state University, and another sawmill but to no avail. Hence the craigslist posting before they sent it to the dump.
Their contact told me that they had received over 100 responses to their posting! Fortunately, nobody else could move it.... so he told me that it was mine if I wanted it.
I went down to look at it, and this is what I found:
Of the two VA Tech designs, this was the larger model (about 18' long), and originally designed for about 1,600 - 2000 bd ft of 4/4 oak. SAS had tacked on an addition to one end in order to accommodate the lengths of their lumber.
During the next few weeks I provided the requested insurance certificates, and waited for their Risk Management folks to draft up a legal agreement between us. I also spent some time figuring out how best to move the kiln. Last week we signed all of the agreements, this past Tuesday I stopped by DMV to pick up an oversize load permit and yesterday we arrived on site bright and early to prep the kiln for moving and to load it.
Because of the height (turned out that it was 12' 6" overall), I could not load it upright onto my trailer, as it would be too tall to fit underneath the highway overpasses (the peak would have been 15' above grade). So my plan was to brace it internally, bolt some skids to one side, and then pivot it onto my trailer by hinging the skids to one side of the trailer.
We took the backhoe from the farm with us in order to handle the loading.
Here we are arriving at the SAS campus, preparing to unload the backhoe:
After unloading, we removed the extension scabbed onto the end, and installed the temporary internal bracing:
The next step was to install the 6 x 6 skids on the door side, and to install some plates across the top of the skids so that the backhoe forks could support the side of the building:
Next step was to measure and determine our hinge location, so that the kiln would be properly centered on the trailer after we pivoted it over. Because the weight was not concentric, I opted to stagger the kiln about a foot to one side of the trailer so that we did not have too much weight hanging off one side. After measuring and installing the hinges, we jacked up the side of the kiln so that we could place the trailer right up against it, and then lower the hinge pins into the rub rail of the trailer:
After I got the front of the trailer right up against the skids, I took the backhoe and picked up / skidded the back end of the trailer up against the kiln, and we lowered the hinges into position.
The next step was to attach a safety chain to the backhoe fork carriage, along with a come-a-long, and raise the forks up to the top of the building. The plan was to start pivoting the kiln onto the trailer by using the come-a-long, until we had the top plate where it would intersect the first foot of the forks. This would give us ample clearance for the fork carriage not to damage the roof as we pivoted the kiln over. It worked perfectly (and I'm still surprised!).
Starting the pivot with the come-a-long:
Continuing the pivot by using the forks:
Attached to the trailer and ready to depart:
Instead of strapping the kiln to the trailer and risking damaging it, we lag bolted timbers directly to the trailer deck and then lag bolted the timbers to the skids. Worked like a champ!
After an uneventful trip back to the farm, this morning I borrowed a 25 ton crane from my neighbor and unloaded the kiln, basically reversing the pivot and hinging it back over the side and onto the ground. We had placed steel chokers on the ground before pivoting it off the trailer, so all we had to do was hook them up and get everything balanced:
Next step was to pick it and swing it over to the foundation that we built earlier this week. This is an interesting photo that I took through the cab on the crane as I was swinging the building over:
At the end of the day today, it looked like this:
We still need to rebuild the far end where we removed the addition, rework the internal baffles and fan system, as well as re-seal the entire unit and install another layer of translucent panels. We also need to run a buried electric circuit from the barn over to it to power the fans. However the hard part is over.
Many, many thanks to Salem for taking the time and being kind enough to inform me about this great opportunity, to the great team at SAS (who could not have been nicer to work with) for their commitment to recycling the unit instead of simply discarding it, and to Steve Coles for creating this great NCWW community!
Scott
About a month ago Salem (Eyekode) sent me a PM asking me if I had seen the posting on the Raleigh Craigslist for a free solar kiln. Nope, I hadn't seen it (it was about 2 hours old when I received Salem's PM), so I checked out the listing and was intrigued. The solar kiln pictured was the standard Virginia Tech design (one of the best and most popular designs), and the posting didn't say much about it other than that it was free, tall (14' tall), and that it would be suitable as a solar kiln or perhaps a greenhouse, but that it may need to be cut down for transportation. The posting also stated that insurance would be required from whomever moved it.
I have been thinking about building some solar kilns to augment my dehumidification kiln, and dedicate at least one of them for drying 8/4 quartersawn oak (it takes almost 4 months to kiln dry 8/4 oak). So the opportunity to get a jump start on this project was of real interest.
No phone number was listed in the posting, just the standard response via Craigslist, so I fired off a short response indicating my interest. A couple of days go by with no response, so I sent another e-mail response but from a different e-mail address, thinking that maybe my first mail was blocked by a spam filter or something. In my second mail, I kept it simple and stated my interest, the fact that I had the equipment necessary to move it, and that I could provide the required certificates of insurance.
The next day I receive a phone call from one of the asset managers at SAS in Cary. Turns out that they built a new building a year or so ago, and wanted it to be LEEDS certified. So they recycled a lot of the timber from the building site into wood for interior use, and built the solar kiln to dry it. Since the project was complete, they no longer needed the kiln and wanted it to go to a good home (they had previously offered it to a museum, NC state University, and another sawmill but to no avail. Hence the craigslist posting before they sent it to the dump.
Their contact told me that they had received over 100 responses to their posting! Fortunately, nobody else could move it.... so he told me that it was mine if I wanted it.
I went down to look at it, and this is what I found:
Of the two VA Tech designs, this was the larger model (about 18' long), and originally designed for about 1,600 - 2000 bd ft of 4/4 oak. SAS had tacked on an addition to one end in order to accommodate the lengths of their lumber.
During the next few weeks I provided the requested insurance certificates, and waited for their Risk Management folks to draft up a legal agreement between us. I also spent some time figuring out how best to move the kiln. Last week we signed all of the agreements, this past Tuesday I stopped by DMV to pick up an oversize load permit and yesterday we arrived on site bright and early to prep the kiln for moving and to load it.
Because of the height (turned out that it was 12' 6" overall), I could not load it upright onto my trailer, as it would be too tall to fit underneath the highway overpasses (the peak would have been 15' above grade). So my plan was to brace it internally, bolt some skids to one side, and then pivot it onto my trailer by hinging the skids to one side of the trailer.
We took the backhoe from the farm with us in order to handle the loading.
Here we are arriving at the SAS campus, preparing to unload the backhoe:
After unloading, we removed the extension scabbed onto the end, and installed the temporary internal bracing:
The next step was to install the 6 x 6 skids on the door side, and to install some plates across the top of the skids so that the backhoe forks could support the side of the building:
Next step was to measure and determine our hinge location, so that the kiln would be properly centered on the trailer after we pivoted it over. Because the weight was not concentric, I opted to stagger the kiln about a foot to one side of the trailer so that we did not have too much weight hanging off one side. After measuring and installing the hinges, we jacked up the side of the kiln so that we could place the trailer right up against it, and then lower the hinge pins into the rub rail of the trailer:
After I got the front of the trailer right up against the skids, I took the backhoe and picked up / skidded the back end of the trailer up against the kiln, and we lowered the hinges into position.
The next step was to attach a safety chain to the backhoe fork carriage, along with a come-a-long, and raise the forks up to the top of the building. The plan was to start pivoting the kiln onto the trailer by using the come-a-long, until we had the top plate where it would intersect the first foot of the forks. This would give us ample clearance for the fork carriage not to damage the roof as we pivoted the kiln over. It worked perfectly (and I'm still surprised!).
Starting the pivot with the come-a-long:
Continuing the pivot by using the forks:
Attached to the trailer and ready to depart:
Instead of strapping the kiln to the trailer and risking damaging it, we lag bolted timbers directly to the trailer deck and then lag bolted the timbers to the skids. Worked like a champ!
After an uneventful trip back to the farm, this morning I borrowed a 25 ton crane from my neighbor and unloaded the kiln, basically reversing the pivot and hinging it back over the side and onto the ground. We had placed steel chokers on the ground before pivoting it off the trailer, so all we had to do was hook them up and get everything balanced:
Next step was to pick it and swing it over to the foundation that we built earlier this week. This is an interesting photo that I took through the cab on the crane as I was swinging the building over:
At the end of the day today, it looked like this:
We still need to rebuild the far end where we removed the addition, rework the internal baffles and fan system, as well as re-seal the entire unit and install another layer of translucent panels. We also need to run a buried electric circuit from the barn over to it to power the fans. However the hard part is over.
Many, many thanks to Salem for taking the time and being kind enough to inform me about this great opportunity, to the great team at SAS (who could not have been nicer to work with) for their commitment to recycling the unit instead of simply discarding it, and to Steve Coles for creating this great NCWW community!
Scott
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