When I first moved out to my new place, I was walking around, finding a spot for the septic system, and the overcast sky suddenly cleared, and I heard off in in the distance what sounded like a train. Everyone always says that tornadoes sound like trains, but I didn't think much of it.
It started getting louder, and started to sound closer.
I start to become mildly worried at this point, and look around for a bolt hole, or a ditch to hide in. Nothing is handy. I start walking around looking for a big rock to hide under or something, and the tornado blows it's whistle..... It's the train on the tracks about two miles from the house.
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(click on pictures for an enlarged version)
This episode did convince me that I needed some kind of storm shelter at the new place. Being, at the time, single, and extremely frugal...(some might say "cheap"), I bought two 55 gallon drums and welded them together end to end, then buried them in the front yard on thier side. Problem solved.
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Here are some pictures of the concrete dog house I built. The genesis of this was some long conversations on building rock and concrete shops. A guy in South Africa introduced me to catenary archs and "hessian weave". As a dog house it was a total failure: the dogs hated it. But as a learning experiance it turned out ok
Eventually I came to my senses and re-married my ex-wife. What a friend of mine refers to as my "re-wife". For some reason she thought the two 55 gallon drums burried in the front yard weren't big enough for everyone to get into. Go figure. Anyway, I needed a bigger storm shetler.
I literally agonized for months over how to build it. I looked at the FEMA recomendations, I looked at commercial storm shelters, and I read everything I could find on the subject. The final two contenders were building a rectangular shelter with pre-cast sections, then moving them into place with the tractor, and building a catenary arch/big dog house. The arch won out, but barely. It would require less steel, and much less concrete. If I have to do one again, I'll use the precast section method. Especialy as I've finished the concrete mixer for the tractor, but that a story for another article.
I live on a hillside in the woods, and while I could dig a hole in the ground and bury the storm shelter, it seemed silly not to build it into the side of the hill. Especialy as I had already dug a large section of the hillside out in a bid to level the yard out for a possible bigger house. Anyway, to pictures.
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Wife: "Why is there a big hole in the back yard? Are you pretending to be Fred Flintstone?" On the left is a "temporary" form made from scrap wood, to make sure the hole was big enough. Center and right are the more final forms for the footting. Note the dirt ramp to run the wheelbarrow over to get the concrete to the back.
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Left is a picture of the woods in winter time for the archive. I'm going to camoflage the shop, and I need to know what colors to buy. Seriously. You can see it from the road in the winter time, so I'm going to paint it to look like the winter woods. Why not. The sheet metal is all different colors anyway, as I was to, emm, frugal to buy new metal. Center is footing poured, right is slab poured. I'm getting better at pouring slabs, this one is almost as smooth as the one in the shop that was professionaly done.
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More pictures of the slab in daylight, and the curve on the back.
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They say that a hanging chain forms a catenary arch. This is a chain, it is hanging, I am going to claim that this is a catenary arch. Center is me splicing two pieces of 3/4" plywood together to cut the "ribs" out for the form. Right is sections of the form about to go together. Was going to put wood on the compound curve on the back, but it was starting to look pretty horrible, so I just stapled some tarp scraps on it. Seemed to hold the concrete up ok, though it did bow in a bit, and needed more bracing (on the frame) on the inside bottom.
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Form assembled and braced, with wire added. Form is temporary, after the concrete went on and before the front rock wall went up, I pulled the form out. Was setup on a 2x4 that I pulled out from underneith. This dropped the form 1.5 inches, and let me remove it from the completed rock arch.
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More pictures of the form, including my fancy interlocking connection method for the back ribs, which worked really well.
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Here is the concrete going on. It's really quite amazing how vertical you can "pour" concrete. Had a friend over to help me with the "pour". "Where is the other half of the form?" he asks, "Think stucco, not concrete" I says. He replies that his stucco work looks horrible, to which I reply that is is going to be covered with several feet of dirt, and it doesn't matter what it looks like.
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Pictures of me finishing up the shell. David was going to come Saturday and help, but this Friday was such a nice day I went ahead and finished myself. Then I went over to his place Saturday and helped him fix a leak in his sewer system. In the snow. Don't you love the weather in Okalhoma?
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Front of the storm shelter was always planned to be a rock wall, would blend in with the rock retaining walls on the yard, and fit right in with the woods. I was really looking forward to building this section, as I had built a rock building before, but I had gotten pretty sloppy with the mortar. This gave it the "rough" look, so it turned out ok. On this one I went for a much more refined look. Metal frame around the door is made from old bed frames, which are some of the most useful items in my scrap pile. Wood is a temporary form to make the inside of the rock wall flat.
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On the left, Alana has come out to inspect. Center she is running for her life. Right, I have captured her and put her to work.
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Not a bad helper, all considered. Though she could only lift the buckets when they were about half full. A few more years, and a couple other rock buildings, and she will be able to lift them completely full, I'm sure.
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Finished shelter, steel plated door in place. I'm particularly proud of the dry stack rock wall on the right, but the one on the left needs to be scooted out a bit on the top, to line up with the vertical mortared wall. Also, the first project for the new concrete mixer will be to mix some mortar to raise the mortared wall another foot or so. Fairly easy to do now that's it's been backfilled.
I'm quite happy with the project, all in all. Need a few tweeks here and there. Total outlay for the project, including the wood for the forms, and the 28 tones of gravel and sand (of which I still have about 1/3) was about $800. Ignoring, of course, the man-hours. Not to bad for a 80 square foot storm shelter.
Quote from one of the guys at work when I told him I couldn't work Saturday because I had to go home and build a storm shelter. "You aren't fooling anyone, you are building a BUNKER!".