Any home owner will tell you that there is always a project or two waiting to be done. Some are urgent, and some can be put on the back burner until you have the time, money, or ambition, or they become urgent. With a property with several buildings, the number of projects waiting for attention multiplies. We inherited a unique project when we bought the property – a leaning silo.
We didn’t expect to be getting our very own leaning tower. Honestly it was pretty low on our priority list, and we planned to keep an eye on it and if it started leaning more to move it up. I took some pictures last fall and checked it again after winter. It was hard to tell without having marked the wall and taken actual measurements, but it looked like it had gotten subtly worse. We told ourselves we needed to actually scribe a line and watch it better and kept it at the bottom of the priority list.
This fall we had someone approach us who wanted to get into the silo removal business. They wanted to take it down. They came out and looked it over and verbalized several methods to take it down, some much more concerning than others. We asked for a quote and pondered it. While we waited for the quote we contacted someone else we thought had taken silos down before. I was really concerned that the guys who approached us would be cutting their teeth on an unstable silo. It seems dangerous enough with one that is standing straight and should fall predictably. This thing was literally being held up by the barn. Some poor sapling was sandwiched between the silo and the barn. If the barn failed, gravity would take over and it would be gone.
We were right, the other guy had taken 20 down – this year alone! He had been watching the silo lean more and more over the last 5 years. In addition he gave us a quote of less than half of the other guys. It helped that he already owned all his own equipment and would not need to borrow anything. He warned us that he couldn’t guarantee that nothing would happen to the barn. We understood. Our priorities were #1 – no one gets hurt, #2 the barn is saved (if at all possible). He asked when we wanted it down. We told him before someone gets hurt and before it wrecks the barn, other than that we had no timeline. He gave us a rough estimate of after gun deer hunting season (gotta love Wisconsin!). We told him we’d like to be there, and left it at that. Got a call – he would take it down the following week. Brad drove past to see a backhoe in the neighboring field.
Brad was able to take the morning off when he was coming. We got there early, and he was already there, ready to start. I shot stills and Brad was ready with his cellphone to take a video. He dug around the foundation to weaken it structurally more. Tapped it with the backhoe, and it didn’t want to budge. At one point it resettled sealing the crack in the block – ugh. He started to take more dirt out and knock a few more blocks out of the already gaping hole.
Suddenly it started to lean – a lot! Before Brad could react to hit record (or I could get any pics in-between, even in sports mode) it was a cloud of dust.
And so ends our own private leaning tower. No one was hurt, the backhoe was untouched, and the barn didn’t get a scratch. Everyone was pretty happy with how it went.
He disposed of the block, and now we just need to smooth and seed the area this spring. Another project.
Lannon on the Hill 