![]() The first floor has a bathroom, mudroom/laundry combination, and storage space. He's still thinking about skylights in the roof.Īs for living space, Smail figures the basement will have a family room, complete with standard sized pool table, and a small storage area. He put one window in the basement, four on the second floor and third floors, and five on the top floor. The steel frames were all painted with rust-inhibiting paint that matched the color of the bin. Then he welded the steel tube frame into the opening and, finally, mounted the windows in the frames with self-tapping screws. With a plasma cutter, he cut each opening precisely. He needed a flat surface to mount the windows, so he made a frame for each from 1 1/2-in. However, installing normal house windows in a curved corrugated steel wall left him scratching his head - but not for long. Smail went shopping for windows and found all he needed at a local discount building materials outlet. He ducted these gaps together so he can pull warmed air from them into the basement and then let it rise naturally through vents located in the floors and ceilings of each of the upper stories. from the exterior wall - on the south half of the bin only - from the basement to the roof. ![]() With this in mind, he made an air gap between the insulation foam and the steel bin wall by stapling heavy paper between the studs about 1 in. Smail figured the bin walls would heat up and at least partially heat itself. Before applying drywall over the studs against the bin wall, he filled the gaps between them with foam insulation. Once the wall studs were in place around the interior of the bin wall, he roughed out some smaller rooms on each floor. "I used galvanized bolts with carriage heads, so they look just like the ones holding the rings together," he says. He attached 2 by 4 studs to the bin wall by drilling through the width of the board and on through the steel wall and then running a long bolt through the wall and board. In the end, he decided a stairway would be the best. I also considered mounting a section of large galvanized culvert on the outside of the bins and installing an elevator in it," says Smail. ![]() "I thought about putting in a fireman's pole from the top to the bottom. He roughed in three stories, giving him four floors in all, with ceilings that are about 7 ft. Once the basement floor was poured, Smail put the rest of the rings on top, capped by one of the bin roofs so the structure is 40 ft. of the rings and backfilled to that level and graded around the basement so water drains away. "I poured a concrete floor in it, just like you'd pour to set the bin on if you were using it to store grain," he says. Smail first dug a shallow basement into which he put the bottom three rings of the grain bin. He now has a cozy four-story home that blends into its surroundings, but affords a great view of the mountains in the distance. tall bins and combined them into one building at a site between a couple of other bins on his father's property. He also liked the idea of doing something a little different. "I live in an old mobile home right now, and I wanted more room and something that was more energy efficient," he says. Ray works with his father, Dale, in earth moving and construction and also does a little farming on the side. grain bins being given away just for the taking last fall, Ray Smail of Alder, Mont., decided immediately to take them. In September 2016, a 17-year-old girl from Haltom City fell to her death after climbing up on top of the silos.When he found a couple of 24-ft. In 2016, the city’s building standards commission unanimously deemed the silos “substandard and hazardous.” One member of the commission was absent. People come to do drugs or drop off cars, and sometimes those experiencing homelessness camp there. To one side, grass and weeds have been left to grow unmanaged and trees have grown so tall and thick they look like a small forest.īesides the general look of the silos, neighbors say they bring trouble. The structure, which dates back to 1924, has been shut down since the 1980s, according to residents. Residents near the structure at 3700 Alice St. told the Star-Telegram in July that they didn’t know much about the structure, but do know they want it gone. A fire at the abandoned silos and grain elevator in the Worth Heights neighborhood of Fort Worth is under investigation by the fire department.
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