Mystang's Homesteading Circus

[thistlebloom]

Ours is 4' deep. I've never been down there, just hung down far enough to hand dh necessary tools. The entry is in the MB closet floor.

 

[Bruce]

The access to our crawl space is by climbing up from the basement under the original house. As near as I can tell the part we replaced was originally a barn that was dragged from somewhere else and attached. Unfortunately we now have some fairly serious foundation problems with the original house as well (*). Most likely both structures were built before 1860 given the hand hewn posts and beams. It wasn't until after the Civil War that steam powered saws came into being. Water powered saws apparently couldn't handle big beams.

* Because some many years ago a genius decided to remove some of the field stone a foot from the corner to put in a door. It is actually amazing it held together as long as it did but finding people who can deal with such things isn't easy.

 

[mystang89]

I assume the hay door also works as designed?

Hay door works great so far. Only thing that it's a bit of a mess to fiddle with us the rope system. For some reason when I'm raising the door or hay claw the rope being to twist making it sometimes very difficult to lock the center pulley into the trolley system. Might be the rope itself. Might try some jute rope for instead of the nylon.

So far, so good. 20 yrs. Hard to believe i's been that long.

That's awesome! It sounds like you made that nice and solid. Time really flies. Its the one commodity that everyone wants more of, never has enough of but yet wastes so much of and is so sad when it's gone.

 

[mystang89]

The access to our crawl space is by climbing up from the basement under the original house. As near as I can tell the part we replaced was originally a barn that was dragged from somewhere else and attached. Unfortunately we now have some fairly serious foundation problems with the original house as well (*). Most likely both structures were built before 1860 given the hand hewn posts and beams. It wasn't until after the Civil War that steam powered saws came into being. Water powered saws apparently couldn't handle big beams.

* Because some many years ago a genius decided to remove some of the field stone a foot from the corner to put in a door. It is actually amazing it held together as long as it did but finding people who can deal with such things isn't easy.

It sounds like your house has a colorful history to it. That's one of the things I really love about old houses, figuring out the history of them.

By the way, happy Father's day to all you dad's or expecting dad's today!

 

[farmerjan]

I built my current house and knew I would be the one going under there most of the time. I have a height that I can sit up under! Lovely & dry. Also had a way wider & deeper footing put in.....just not wanting settling issues. So far, so good. 20 yrs. Hard to believe i's been that long.

Smart woman to think those things through ahead of time.

 

[Bruce]

Might be the rope itself. Might try some jute rope for instead of the nylon.

Is it twisted or braided? Braid is less likely to twist. Of course there was no braided rope when that system was first installed. If gathering up braided rope (not being wound on a reel) it should be allowed to fall into natural figure 8 loops, not given the half twist used with twisted line to make a round coil. Rope, like wire, wants to be unrolled, not unwound which causes it to kink. Though I would think once it is all out and straight then run through the pulleys it would not matter how it was "unbound".

 

[mystang89]

Is it twisted or braided?

This is the rope we're using right now which is giving all the trouble.

 

[Jesusfreak101]

That looks braided to me. But I am no expert.

 

[Bruce]

Definitely braided.

Is it twisting/kinking while being raised such that it won't go through the pulley??

 

[farmerjan]

It is a braided rope. You may find that you have to go to a sisal or hemp type rope, not a "plastic" one. They do not seem to feed through the old type pulleys as well for some reason. There might be something to do with some sort of friction; I don't know. I just know that they just don't work as well.