You might check with a concrete industry place they might have a premade product that the engineering is already done for you. Been awhile but I think it was called stress core. Had hollow tube areas with cable put under high tension then concrete poured in the mold. Lighter weight and if I remember right stronger than solid concrete. IIRC
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Jacob, crossing Eastern Oregon, Washington and Idaho did you see the big mound made potatoes sheds??
You can look these up on the Internet I am sure.
Same-same needs.
Moving bulky items in and out with a forklift.
Your seasonal torrential rains says to me you want to keep above grade and bring the earth sheltering to you.
And building a load bearing ceiling above you? One to accommodate noisy vibrating generators? Expensive. And still you are attaching a noise maker to a large amplifying echo chamber.
Generators are best separately housed to isolate them.
Steve Unruh
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I have considered a dome shape building if I do that I would just burry the entire thing and plant a pasture on the top of it. I might need to explain the use a little better to understand why that would be a drawback.
Dad and I inherited a business distributing packaged ice. The ice is in 7 and 16 lb bags which are stacked on a pallet. The pallets are 40"/48", and between 5 and 6 feet tall. As of right now we drive our refrigerated truck which will hold 8 pallets to a town/city 70 miles south of us to pick up the ice out of a ware house. If we had our own freezer they would deliver to us by the semi trailer load which is 26 pallets worth. if i am going to build a freezer i would like to put the little extra into it so i have a good supply during the heavy part of the season and i want to make a moveable wall in it so i donât have to cool the entire thing during the light part of the season.
I want to burry it to try to make it more energy efficient. The pallets would get stacked two high in the freezer once I got a forklift. Till then the building would be big enough to hold what i have to have just stacked one layer thick.
The generator shed would not be a have to on it maybe its unrealistic. But I would like to make the top of this shed usable for a light duty building. Another reason i want to bury it is because i need a loading dock to load and unload the pallets with a pallet jack. my thought is to build this in a hill where you access the freezer at the bottom of the hill and the upper building at the top part of the hill. i think i could pretty simply build drainage out around it so it wouldnât fill up with water. I am trying to figure out if my bar joist idea would be strong enough or if i should give up on the upper building part and just bury it and let animals mow it.
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I also donât have a lot of money to put into this so if I loose the second shed so be it. or maybe posts inside would be better although i would really like to avoid that
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Jakob, build 2 heavy duty walls with railroad ties at ground level 10â tall. Dirt wall berm the dirt on the out side building. Put a truss roof over it insulation in the roof and walls. No post in the center floor area. Gravel floor. Insulate the double doers on each side of the the shed. We used these sheds all over around here for over a hundred year we call them potatoe sheds for storing potatoes.
Bob
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Jakob, you would probably like to have -20 ° C in the refrigerator, for which it is good to have more than 10 cm thick insulation (styrofoam), which you will also have to have if the space is underground, it is true that it can be more than 30 ° C outside, underground 10-15 ° C, which equates to a cm thicker insulation. Great emphasis should be placed on floor insulation.
Probably you have no problem getting used refrigeration units from a truck in America, maybe the cheapest solution, ⌠But you run the engine on wood gas, maybe ⌠maybe 
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Jakob, instead of posts on basement levelâŚhow about let the trusses on the above shed support the floor? You would have âhanging postsâ inside the shed instead. (And the trusses would be good for Nordic snowload conditions 
)
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Building into the hill side will solve you drainage issues but if you donât waterproof the outside of the walls you will always have mold problems. You saw my root cellar and underground storage. I poured those walls and just backfilled them. Since I have had to go and line the interior with plastic sheets and then pour a aircrete cap over the plastic. Easier to do it right the first time. Your main concern would be with what sort of static load you are carrying. Earth cover? 24 foot is a significant span underground. You could easily build a space frame out of the tubing that would carry the load. Just think of how a bridge is built so that all the stresses are equally delivered to each connection point. Some sort of arch or hoop is always stronger as well. If you donât want to go through all that just logs about one foot by 18 inches on about four foot enters with 2 inch planking. Iâm sure one of the engineers here could figure out the load for you.
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My problem with an above ground freezer is the cost of keeping it cool. even if i have a wood generator that i run as much as possible in my 90F-110F weather 8 months a year it is going to cost a fortune to power. if i burry it and put in the shade have several shade layers over it it should bring that cost down a lot. our root cellars here that are buried in the shade have about a 25F temp difference compared to outside temp. during the summer and they stay about 15f warmer in the cold months.
I know it will need insulation which i can do inside and out. It will have to be sealed and drainage put in around it.
Most of you guys are saying what i have been fearing that the load is to high for that amount of span. what if i were to make it narrower and longer? if i were to go to 16 ft wide on the inside of the insulation could my bar joists handle it? I like the underground but it might not be practical. i would choose to have just a buried building with a fence around it than to have it above ground. i am just trying to find a way to have both.
JO that is not an idea i had thought of but it might be a way to add some extra support they would have to be some serious steel trusses on the top though
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Do you know what your groundwater table is? Do you have a low enough place on your site to have gravity drainage? What is your soil made up of? Did you do a soil boring?
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Cutting that span down would be a very good plan. Better would be two 12 ft bays. Then it gets almost easy. With your saw mill you could cut 4 by 12âs two foot on center and still carry a foot of earth cover if you wanted to. Personally I would build a geodesic dome and cover the frame with pieces of burlap soaked in a cement slurry. Then I would spray the entire dome with a styrocrete which is just shredded expanded polystyrene, like they use for shipping stuff mixed in with foamcrete. This would provide you with way more strength than you could get from any post and beam structure and the styrocrete would provide a lot of insulation. Just some other things to think about. Remember that in your clay soil you will get a lot of lateral pressure as the clay absorbs water so you will have to provide a few inches of gravel or crushed stone between your walls and the surrounding earth. Probably unnecessary with a circular structure. Also keep in mind that you would need extruded polystyrene boards if you insulated outside the walls and a 2" thick board is a buck a sq ft now.
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Jakob, as I understand you, your main goal in the cold store is economical operation. I support you here I can give you some ideas: -refrigeration unit is actually a heat pump, if you heat a house or workshop in the cold period, on the other hand you can store cooling energy in the form of ice or frozen moist earth (ground collector), which must be at a greater depth, say under the refrigerator. -you use cold energy to maintain the temperature in the warehouse -cooling unit can be driven with photovoltaic panels mounted on the roof of the building (otherwise quite an expensive investment but very economical operation) -wood gas to drive an electric generator that accumulates energy in the network, which you use when needed youâve probably studied it all before and take this as a loud reflection ,
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I think what should be known is there is a big difference between using deep ground at mass at50-53F to cool and keep-chill with. Versus âinsulateâ with.
That 50-53F mass will continuously bleed heat energy into the stored 0 degree mass.
Jacob you have no choice. You must insulate your floor and walls from the earth mass to keep 0 degree mass, frozen. Refrigeration energy will be refrigeration energy. Always best to minimized the needs first.
Youâd be better going old ice house construction with all woodened inner and outer wall spaced for 36" of loose dry true sawn dust fill in between. All local. And available.
Better than energy wise spending out; then ever try to cool anything not insulated from earth mass. Or cave/bunker try and warm the earth mass.
You only use the earth mass to shield from the sun, the winds, tornadoes and such.
Spend the expenses making an true floating insulated grade weight bearing concrete floor. Will mean the good perimeter foam blocks in under the edges. A thick dry sand bed in the center.
Build up from there.
S.U.
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Yes the ground will gravity drain. i have not cored it but it is the same as all our ground red clay full of rocks and roots. with a little top soil on top.
Domes would defiantly be stronger but harder to use.
I know it will have to be insulated well.
I donât really want to put wood in a underground freezer full of ice i think it will degrade over time i would trust steel way more.
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Since everyone is throwing out ideas. What if you had two refrigerated semi trailers and then built a staging room at the door openings. The room or two rooms (inner and outer) could open to a truck dock. You could do the refrigeration thru the reefer holes. Then as Steve and Bob have suggested berm earth up the sides or make a sawdust filled wall. Set trusses as the roof of these trailers wonât support a lot. Put a pole barn metal roof on top and fill completely with very dry sawdust. This would eliminate a LOT of work to support a roof of an underground cooler. You would have to be vigilant about mold as you could have problems with the ice with any of these cooling methods you would try. Old ice houses with sawdust insulation and straw have worked all over the United States for over 100 years. Because you have thermal mass on your side your biggest enemy is heat infiltration.
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Find yourself some retired refrigeration guy who isnât afraid to think outside of the box. Show him your truck and some of your familyâs projects. Someone with a refrigeration background will be very helpful to your project.
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I built a 32 ft diameter dome once Jacob. Once I was set up to cut the struts it didnât take that long. I think a round structure would be easier to work in, spotting the pallets along the perimeter would make them more accessible than in a straight line where rotating stock to keep the ones at the back rotated to the front would require a lot of jockeying around.
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Ok so I need some more help with this stupid 2008 Town and CountryâŚ(BTW, Donât ever buy a particualr car just because your wife likes it)âŚ
anyway âŚ
in the city the other day on a side streetâŚ
Car stopped pulling at a stop sign. Rev up, will release and pull, then after a foot or two locks up again.
fluid level is fine
Makes me think of the âslow downâ mechanism used for cruise control is engaged all the time.
It is going into gear forward and reverse, but will not move in either.
Car will roll with the engine off in neutral.
Car will not roll continuously in neutral with engine running. Locks up, releases, locks up, releases, etc.
Demonstrated this problem a time or two in the week prior, but only for a short time and then cleared itself. Now, condition is permenant.
Converter? Solenoid? electronic shift pawl?
I feel like replacing the T.Con. Solenoid and fluid, but it hurts my feelings to throw parts at something aimlessly.
Any direction to look? I would appreciate it greatly.
@SteveUnruh ? @anyone else?
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Hi Billy, are there any lights on?
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Have you tried the disconnect the battery and reset the cars computer. Reconnect the battery. Even if there are no codes on the read out.
Bob
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