The move-a-wall saga continues. Last week was Easter week, a big event in Panama, so Armando took a lot of time off. And I was really tired from cutting out the big wall and the doors and window, so I took four days off myself. When I was ready to go back to work there was a power outage that lasted most of my work day, so it was more hammock time.

But this morning there was no escaping it. It was time to lift the 800-pound wall, that I cut out last week, onto the roof. The project took about two-and-a-half hours from start to finish and there were no injuries! Here is how we did it:

First, I put a v-groove wheel at the edge of the container to guide the cable to the winch below on the ground. A funny thing happened; as I put the screw into the shipping container metal tubing, I heard a hissing sound. What happened is that that the tubing was so well welded that when I drilled into it here at about 2,200 feet above seal level*, the now-pressurized Chinese air was released:

*(About a week after publishing this post, I noticed a typo in the paragraph above. I wrote, “seal level” instead of “sea level.” I proof many times and then Cyn has a run at my post, too. But we missed this one; I think I’ll leave it as is, because I have never seen a seal swimming in the mountain lakes around here, only at sea level.)

Then we wanted to move about ten-feet of the wall out of the container. We first tried with crowbars, but the wall was just too heavy. Nothing happened. So I got the come-along and tow straps out of the trunk of the car. We hooked onto the wall where I had welded one of the tie-down loops that I had cut off inside the container, then through the chain link fence, and onto a tree in the lot next door. Here is the wall pulled out and the cable connected from the winch up and over the container:

I had Armando stand clear, then tapped a few times on the Up button on the winch and the wall raised effortlessly into the air:

Cynthia got into the action, too, pushing the Up button:

When the wall got to the top, and a few feet over the container, we didn’t notice that the wall got hung up on a small piece of metal. There was too much strain on the cable and it started to fray. Oops! Here is how bad it was:

Here’s Plan B. We switched to the come-along and tow straps that we had used earlier to pull the metal out of the container. I cranked the come-along and Armando used a big pry bar to encourage the wall up onto the roof:

At this point the pulling got difficult; we needed to move more of the wall out of the container. I cut the damaged cable and Armando tied it off at the far end of the roof so that we wouldn’t lose any ground when I removed the come-along. Then we took the come-along and tow strap downstairs and hooked them up like this:

It was very hot and strenuous work so we took a break:

Back to work, we moved the come-along back up to the roof and inched the wall bit by bit. This was a good cardiac workout:

Here the panel is almost all the way up:

It’s a great sight from inside, too:

After rearranging the tow strap and come-along one final time like this,

we finally had this 800-pound gorilla completely moved onto the roof:

Whew! That was a hot and grueling task! Armando and I did a big high-five and Cynthia said that I was her man. Life couldn’t be better.

…Did you notice how rusty the roofs of containers 1 and 2 are? Armando and I sanded and painted them about two years ago. In some places big flakes of metal are peeling off. Shipping containers are made of coreten steel, alloys that resist corrosion. Even so, if you are planning a container project, know that containers are not without maintenance issues. I’ll be cleaning and repainting the roofs before pouring concrete slabs over them.

The Banana Report: Harvest time! Armando said that because all of the petals had fallen off the flower at the bottom of the bananas, it was time to harvest them. Although they aren’t quite ripe yet, birds had already pecked away at one of the bananas. I cut the crop, moved them into the shop, and hung them by a rope from the ceiling. Another week or so and they will be ready to eat!

Next step? I have to weld a frame of 2″x2″ steel tubing around the wall that we just lifted onto the roof, then lift it vertically to make the wall between the loft and the roof deck. The fun isn’t over yet!

That’s all for now. Thanks for stopping by.