Picking up the lumber failure

I will have to work on the video since Blogger doesn't seem to like the avi file I am trying to upload; but then neither does WMP or QuickTime Player, so maybe it is the file.

Anywho... I picked up the lumber from the rack that failed last week after we got home from Portland to celebrate Mother's Day with my mom and see them since we didn't make it up there last weekend. It was a good trip with nice weather until it rained Sunday afternoon and on the way home during the eclipse.

That was pretty cool, the eclipse.  I wish now that I would have stopped and taken a picture of the sun shadow on the clouds. We were able to view the progress of the eclipse while we drove home without needing to worry about eye protection since the clouds were our rear projection screen.

Anywho... when we got home and it wasn't raining yet, I figured it would be probably by sometime today, but hopefully not by morning, so I got to sorting out the lumber pile from where it fell.  I needed to then add an additional support and shelf brackets and distribute the boards over more shelves.

I had to survey the damage first since I wasn't sure exactly how badly the rails and shelving brackets were damaged. It looks like when the upper shelf fell, the support bracket hooks ripped through the metal between the slots.

The shelf that this load of lumber fell on below it was a different matter; it buckled under the load of the upper shelf hitting it and broke the hooks on the brackets. Both sides were pretty much equally bent.

The parts in the middle of the two brackets are supposed to have two hooks on them to hang on the slots in the rails. (I should have put an unaffected one in there too); with the top hooks being sheered off with the face of where they would be in the rail and the bottom ones just loosing the hook part.

I got the extra middle support installed by screwing in a brace between the rafters and that into the 2x4 used on end for the vertical support of the shelving bracket, like in the above picture. I had a board at the bottom of the existing two vertical 2x4s that was level with the bottom of the rails, so it was pretty easy to get the rail in line with the other ones.

Once I got that on I put in as much lumber as I could fit on three upper shelves and am hoping it isn't as much as was originally there before it failed.

Please excuse the darkness of this pic it was taken by flashlight and my phones wimpy "flash" after dark when I finished pulling in all the remaining longer boards and got them stacked to the side, mostly under the shelter.

This morning I was disappointed to find out it had been raining overnight but it hadn't gotten stuff too wet. I was mainly concerned with my trailer being out in the rain but it wasn't that wet and I put a tarp over it when I went out so it didn't get soaked with it rained today before I got it back under the shelter roof.

I put up another vertical support, about at the far end of the window in the picture below, to support the end of the long boards.  I think that one is at 10 feet from the first one, being 5 rafters away. The trailer kinda blocks it in the picture, but the boards on the bottom shelf are about 12-14 feet long, hanging beyond that last support. The lumber went on after that with the wire shelf coming next and all those shorter lap board pieces from the hot tub surround fit better since I turned the shelf upside down so the lip on the front went up instead of down, keeping the short boards from slipping off.

Sam was out there while I was doing all of this and I will have to see if I can pull a picture off of the security cameras to show him lifting one of the 14 foot boards and putting it up on the shelf for me; he wanted to help, but he did want me to do the rest by myself after that though.

Sam then helped me dig out the lava rock that was between the house and that scalloped boarder. It took two wheelbarrows full to get rid of that awful stuff. I will still need to dig more out of the dirt there when I eventually pour a concrete slab or put fresh gravel down, but it looks much better now.