Filling out the Form

View from the inside.

With the last arch in place, the crew starts back at the beginning and inserts any missing bolts and tightening everything down. It's amazing to see how the simple act of tightening bolts brings all the arches in line and smooths out the form.

View from the south end.

Working toward completion, we received delivery of our insulation panels and were able to stack them inside the structure. That kept them from melting in the noonday Florida sun.

The stretch bars (see on the side) are a critical part of the equation. Proper application (READ THE INSTRUCTIONS) keeps everything lined up so that one side of the building isn’t a foot-and-a-half longer than the other when you get to the end! 

There’s a line of stretch bars on the top also, but to elaborate would seem redundant.

Allowing for monsoons, and breaking midday for a few hours to avoid being vaporized by the Florida sun, we completed our mission in just six days.

Up she goes!

Bundles of corrugated steel and buckets of bolts, a building make.

Weatherstripping on all joints keeps the water out.

Okay, kiddies, this is what a 40-foot by 50-foot Quonset hut looks like before you add water. Alright, so you don’t add water…just a few thousand bolts… and a few miles of weather-proofing tape doesn’t hurt, either.

A heavy-duty impact drill makes this step fast and easy.

Before the arches go up, the base plates must be anchored. After careful measuring, we drilled half-inch holes about 8 inches deep with a an impact drill. The anchors are half-inch by six-inch Red Head concrete anchors. They work great and can be reasonably purchased from any fastener supply dealer.

As they say: “A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step, and a Quonset hut begins with one arch”. Okay, I added that part about the Quonset hut...and it’s only partially true. A Quonset hut actually begins by bolting two sections together but the most important part of that step is identifying which two sections belong to each other.  

Keep plenty of drill batteries on hand and powered up.

To do this, it helps to have at least one member of the crew who can not only read, but has the proper motivation to do so.  They give you written instructions for a reason: to help you figure out where you screwed up after you realize the knowledge of proper Quonset hut building is NOT in your DNA!

Regardless which method and equipment you choose to raise your first arch, it is the most challenging one to put in place.

This view shows how flexible a single arch is. 

After employing the alternative strategy, I strongly urge you to READ THE INSTRUCTIONS FIRST!

Oh, another thing; Never underestimate the flexibility of a Quonset arch. The more hands you have, the better (and safer) the process will be. We thought we had what it took to get the first arch up, and we did…but my life flashed before my eyes three times before it was securely perched on the scaffold jacks. After putting our first arch up in one piece, we wisely decided to do the rest in half sections and I had no more ’life-flashes’.

Half sections were much easier to work with. This photo shows us with three-and-a-half arches up.

As you can see, things went fairly smoothly from this point, and as each arch wormed its way into place, they actually seemed to get easier.