[karateed]

Bad news. Two of the beams have collapsed with rain water weight. It was supposed to just run off the slope of the tarp but I guess some of it collected in a fold somewhere so now I have a real problem. I think the beam will be reusable but we have several days of rain coming an I've no other way to keep the rain out of the shed other than the tarp.....and it's proven unworthy of the job....so now what? I don't know. Maybe this shed wasn't meant to be saved.

 

[karateed]

and my body still hurts, it's not going to be doing any serious work today......for now the rain's off the shed but it's not going to stay that way for long.....I'm not worried about the day time but nighttime is when we have those nasty torrents so no control there. I'm not going to be staying up all night to protect the shed unfortunately because we're looking at several bad water days here.

 

[TenGees]

I thought those beams didn't look too great. If you're trying the tarp again, I guess you have to keep it taut enough that it can't collect water.... no sags. If you have the headroom, I think you should add a crossmember (wood?) and support the middle of the beams with uprights from that. If it didn't have sags/pockets to collect water then I think the tarp would work temporarily but now the beams are an issue.

 

[karateed]

I thought those beams didn't look too great. If you're trying the tarp again, I guess you have to keep it taut enough that it can't collect water.... no sags. If you have the headroom, I think you should add a crossmember (wood?) and support the middle of the beams with uprights from that. If it didn't have sags/pockets to collect water then I think the tarp would work temporarily but now the beams are an issue.

I agree, the beams are an issue but I have some decent metal to re-enforce them until we get some decent weather. I will have to work on the panels to be ready for the good weather in about 1-2 weeks.

I've put up another tarp, left the old tarp there and the one beam. I probably didn't have the tarp quite tight enough but mostly I think it was the torrential nature of the water, it was really coming down. Probably should have gone outside to check on it then, it was about 3 or 4 am so wasn't too lively.

Anyway, the new tarp is up and much tighter. I think it will just flow the water downhill. We're likely to have rain in about 1-2 hours so we'll see how it does.

 

[karateed]

Just checked it (2 AM), it is raining medium hard and so far the water is running downhill. Hopefully tomorrow during the day we'll get a really hard rain so I can see it's performance under that. Once I know it will hold then I'll start to work on the 2 bent beams and the rest of the infrastructure (read panels here). I may not be super smart but I'm persistent and hopefully we'll overcome any obstacles in the way.

 

[TenGees]

Ed, I think your tarp could still collect water. By the looks of it, you better get the center beam in.

 

[karateed]

Ed, I think your tarp could still collect water. By the looks of it, you better get the center beam in.

Yup, it did hold some water last night but not a 'ton'. I can syphon off whatever I need to in order to keep my work flow happening.

First step will to make the center beam workeable. I have that ability with a strong piece of steel that wasn't going to be used anywhere else so that's the first order of business over the next 2 days. Once that's done, I agree Paul that it will be much more stable. I just need to get to the sunshine and it will be all fine.

Mother nature has provided me with a strong apple tree to help stabalize the tarp. I've put up a 'center post' from within the shed to hopefully help the water shed.....see what I did there?

You can see where the 'center post' is sticking up. That's exactly where the water collected. Right now I believe it will run off that onto the left part which is pretty tight and will run right off. It didn't collect there last night at all.

It's a work in progress with some tweaks that will eventually produce the results I wish for. Fix beam, connect lower beam and upper beam and then we have some stability in the structure while I repair the roof bits.

 

[jw2170]

We have had 5" of rain here, in the past 2 days, so I feel your pain.

Have a large tarp over our camper tariler and having to syphon water of that, also....

 

[karateed]

We have had 5" of rain here, in the past 2 days, so I feel your pain.

Have a large tarp over our camper tariler and having to syphon water of that, also....

I hear ya JW......well, I've been lucky, the rain stopped yestertday and is just starting to return. Here's a couple of pics of the first beam that I repaired.

One more to do in the same way. The beam is much more solid and really there will be no real stress in any of them during the rain because I have 2 tarps and I believe the first one will mostly run downhill and what doesn't will be siphoned daily anyway if needed.

 

[karateed]

Well, here we go again but this time the tarp is working. Here's a picture to show the little bit of water that's collected....

 

[karateed]

And as a side benefit, we usually get light breezes where I live around 10 AM or so that water you see in the picture above is no longer there. The wind is moving the tarp up and down and it's shed the water to where it belongs, on the ground.

The water you see in the picture was collected over a fairly wet evening and night. I was up for part of it and it was raining pretty steadily. I think we have a pretty good setup now....

 

[karateed]

Just a quick update. The panels have all been removed. I'm in the process of fixing any leaks in them and getting them ready to paint. That will be a couple weeks probably but I'm doing that in my garage because, oh, did I tell you my roof collapsed on my shed? Shouldn't be too long now though.

It was way too hot for me to be out in the sun working on it so I stayed in the cool air conditioned living room. Can't take the heat any more like I used to.

Anyway, progress is being made and the finish line is in sight.

 

[karateed]

 

[karateed]

And the 3rd pic....I can only basically do 2 panels a day, 12 panels 6 days, space constraints. 2 done today, 2 of the pics are above and one more here.

 

[jw2170]

Hang in there, Ed,

All things good come to those that wait.......LOL