7, 2015, at 10:47 PM, Christopher Swingley  wrote:

> 
> Scott's mention of jacks and cranes and blocking earlier today
> reminded me of one of last summer's projects.  It involves old tools
> and wood, but not of a sort we traditionally discuss in this forum.


Chris

Well done - and how common is a 50 foot straight log in your area?  They are
pieces of wood that not only will warm you twice, but now have the potential to
warm you a few more ties before it is all over.

I showed this set of pictures about 2 years ago, but here it is again:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/ruby1638/14097256262/in/set-7215764408779
4668/">https://www.flickr.com/photos/ruby1638/14097256262/in/set-721576440877946
68/

My brother lives on the Esopus Creek about 200 yards from the Hudson River below
Albany.  The house is about as close to the creek as Chris’ is, and was built in
the 30’s.  In 1955 there was an epic flood where the house had a couple of
inches of water in it, so it was raised 2 cinder blocks higher, 16”.

In 2011 there was a lot - a lot - of rain in the area.  In fact if you watch
some of CHris’ videos, at the end some videos of that flood come up - Irene by
name.  The creek came up and put 2” of water in the house, so he and his wife
had to move out and fix things up.  He devised a method where he cut the
interior drywall at about 30” off the floor, cut out the wall insulation, and
installed a chair rail and a baseboards with grooves at the back and a removable
piece as a wainscotting.  He changed some wiring to be flood proof, re-
insulated, and finished things off and moved back in.  Since Irene was the 100
year flood he figured he was OK for a while.

Sandy hit the area a year later.  The water rose 13 feet in New York City and
actually filled a couple of tunnels under the East River - yow.  His house is 80
miles up the river and they got 7 feet of that 13.  The water was 22” up the
walls of his freshly re-freshed house.  During Irene, the water came from
upstream, but in Sandy it came from downstream.  Sandy was something like 34”
higher than the epic 1955 flood!!

Again he moved out and in the spring raised the house.  He has a good friend who
is in the Timber Framer’s Guild and he works mostly on mill restoration, but I
also watched him replace one rotted member of a truss in a big old stone barn
without taking the truss apart.  I also had a fun day numbering and
disassembling a 1740 Dutch barn with him and his crew.

He came with his 15 screw jacks and a truck load of timbers, and 4 of us spent
the day lifting the house 28”.  It was - lift and inch on this row of 5, lift an
inch on that row of 5 and back and forth under the house all day.  All the time
wrestling big timbers to set the house on.  Pretty interesting day.

Our sailboat was a few miles away out of the water for the season on the
Roundout Creek in Kingston and the water came up high enough that smaller boats
were floating out into the road, but we need 6 feet of water to float so we were
OK.  I included some pictures showing how easy it is to handle 12 tons with the
right equipment.  They have these machines that can handle a couple of hundred
tons.

OT content - check those screw jacks.

Ed Minch