choppergirl
Well-Known Member
I found a 30x25 pole barn/shop I can have with good tin on the roof if I relocate the tin piece by piece (the rest of it is junk and I'd have to come up with my own sides and new A frame trusses), but I've also have been keeping my eyes out for free house trailers which come up regularly.
A lot of these older 70's house trailers are orphaned and people give them away for free in the South (USA), if you remove them... but there is a problem. You got to get a permit and a licensed mover and huge truck and all kinds of nutty stuff to do so, which I have absolutely no interest in doing. To do so would cost several thousand dollars and third parties, and (they) would have to move a big lumbering house trailer down a road, through obstacles, and to your location.. then do it all again to get it to your final location (an airstrip field, which I don't have yet). This is the reason they are offered free... it'd cost more to move them elsewhere than they are worth... as old as they are, most of them are not even certified to be moved ever again, because they aren't considered able to meet some kind of habitable standard, which leaves them in some kind of "limbo". A waste for all these trailers that would be just fine for huge storage sheds for someone, or even free houses for the poor, but good for me, who smells weakness and opportunity where none other see it, and swims with the sharks ;-)
So I'm wondering how hard it would be, to disassemble a trailer on site like a little worker ant, and move it piece by piece filling up a regular trailer behind a truck to some place new. Roll up the roofing tin, roll up the siding tin, knock apart the wall frames, take up the flooring boards, and eventually get down to the I beams.
Here's a picture of the current candidate, a 48x12 70's house trailer by someone's house. Free for the taking like the rest.
My plane is 40x20 or so, with wings about 5' wide, so with a little storage shed type extension in the middle coming out the back for the tail to sit inside, and the front side wall open to the world with a hanger door, it would fit nicely. I figure I take one of the I-beams and run it across the open wall as the "long roof support" for the open hanger door side, and then cut the other Ibeam up and use it for supports for that one. Figure out a door in the end. Maybe tarps in the beginning, or a door made with vinyl boat cover, or doors that slide to the side, swing open from the middle, or even open forward to lay on the ground and you roll your plane over.
The big concern I have is I've seen the insides of trailer roofs, and ceilings, and walls, and they are built about as cheap and skimpy as possible... esp. the roof A frames which look like a joke. I'm not sure I could reuse any of that...
Siding I've taken off before, and reinstalled, to fix someone else's trailer. So I know I can do that. Most all of it is screwed on, as is the roof probably.
Also I'm not entirely sure how to get the roof off without screwing it up too badly. Most of it are panels that have been creased together where they meet.
In the end I'd probably get all the parts as raw materials, and put it back together in my own way to be the hanger I want.
Still, I'm thinking a lot of work. If I could move the trailer whole without any hassle for a reasonable cost (like one from a rural place to my rural place not very far away on the down low at night), that would be the way to go... but since it isn't, I'm wondering if my "disassemble on site and move piecemeal using a regular pickup truck" is a viable and sane option...
Which would be easier to do? The pole barn idea, or the trailer...?
Yet a third idea is, sometimes just trailer I-beams get listed... which have been salvaged and then are no longer wanted when they never get used... this popped up recently in a listing... and I could use those to build a frame for a steel building, using the pole barn tin for the roof. But how to move in some cases, 60' trailer I-beams...
