New (very old building) shop

[Lynn]

This chapter involves getting a manhole cover installed over my well. I believed that filling in the well and concreting over it would have resulted in a disaster. Instead, we kept the well and integrated in into our drainage system. I wanted to be able to service the permanent sump pump. I can’t tell you how many hours I spent staring at the darn thing. Even today I find it creepy and cool at the same time. Measured it about 100 times. My plans were dictated by the largest manhole cover I could find. Believe it or not, there is a foundry right here in OK that does both cast iron and composite. I definitely wanted composite, so that lifting the cover would be a one man operation. I also wanted LARGE so that I wouldn’t need to engineer a tapered cone system over the existing well. The stones come almost to the surface. A cone would have dictated removing many of the stones to get it to the correct height. If I left all the stones, then I only needed to engineer a concrete ring. Much easier.

I chose this one: https://www.ejco.com/rest/product/ge...rProduct=false
Pretty sure that link will not work if you are not logged in on the site. Converted the PDF to a jpg, and included a pic of the specs.

It was kind of funny when the delivery guy brought the manhole cover and frame the my law office. I had borrowed my son's Suburban to take it home, as it was too big to go into Sherri's Lexus RX 350. The driver asked me: "Why in the world does a lawyer need a manhole cover? We have a bet going at the loading doc. I bet none of them bet I was covering up an anitque well with it INSIDE a building.

After the floor was poured we were left with my 6 x 6 frame around the well. It took a while to get all the vapor barrier pulled through after removing the wooden frame. I am pretty certain that even a 500 year flood rain would not get the water this high at this point, as we have so much perforated pipe under the concrete, I can’t see it getting overwhelmed. In addition, the permanent sump pump would be pulling out water as needed. Ground water can be really weird though, so I wanted every precaution possible. We packed gravel in and hand tamped it with my super heavy home made tamper, then taped a 6 x 6 patch on to the existing vapor barrier (with a giant round hole in the middle for the well). I then made two rings out of Masonite; one larger than the other. I also made four rings out of 5/8 rebar to go inside the Masonite forms. That was a challenge without a bender. Used a vice mounted to my 400 pound steel work bench to bend the rings. I had to mortar a few bricks and stones in place before placing the rings and rebar. I then tied all four pieces of rebar together with short pieces in about 8 places so they would be evenly spaced around the finished ring.

Here is what we ended up with. The spec sheet on the manhole cover indicated it was 5 and 1/16” high from the base of the frame to the top of the cover. Either I measured wrong, or the spec sheet was wrong. The top of the cover ended up being about an 1/8 inch above the grade of my floor. Oh well, not much taper as you will see in the finished concrete. Still very easy to drive over. I think I am safe, as it is rated to support 50,000 pounds. Not planning on driving any tanks in there.