Published by 
The Rural Publishing Co. 
333 W. 30th Street 
Nc» York 
The Rural New-Yorker 
The Business Farmer's Paper 
Weekly, One Dollar Per Year 
Postpaid 
Single Copies, Five Cents 
Voi. lxxi\ 
NEW YORK, APRIL 3, 1915 
No. 4300 
MOVING LARGE FARM BUILDINGS. 
Sliding Them to New Quarters. 
1 am planning to move a barn this Summer and put 
a concrete wall under it. Barn is 20x36, with 16-foot 
posts. Timbers are large, some of them a foot square. 
The ground floor now in the building will all be taken 
out to give more height for top wagons, etc. Vehicles 
will stand on ground or on concrete, and will occupy 
all lower floor. I have graded the barn site so it is 
from eight inches to 1^/j feet higher than the ground 
about. Is there any advantage in this? I plan event¬ 
ually to change to a hip-roof to get more storage room 
for hay. Is this the best way to secure this and what 
pitch would you recommend? IIow thick should wall 
be to support this building? IIow deep should it be 
put in t..e ground so that frost will not destroy it? 
Soil is called clay loam, hardpan about a foot below 
surface. Should wall be battered on outside? Material 
is gravel with considerable sand. I have some stone 
I would like to work into concrete. What proportions 
of gravel and cement would be best? If possible I want 
to build wall up to ground level, then move the build¬ 
ing and when this is in place finish the remaining foot 
of wall. Can .his be done? l. s. 
Onondaga Co., X. Y. 
M ANY farmers have buildings standing on their 
farms that because of location are of little 
use. These may have been centrally located 
at one time, but as different tracts of land are 
bought up and combined, and waste areas brought 
under cultivation, conditions change 
and the best location for them is else¬ 
where. Heretofore the tendency has 
been to let the buildings fall into dis¬ 
use. but lately there has been an at¬ 
tempt to make use of them by moving 
them to (he desired location, and by 
remodeling, make them into a building 
suitable for present day work and con¬ 
ditions. 
INCREASE IN BUILDING VAL¬ 
LES.—There are many reasons for 
this awakening. The silo and modern 
methods of farming call for more room 
—both for storage of crops grown and 
for live stock. It is natural to seek 
the cheapest way of supplying this 
room. The high cost of buildings 
themselves leads to an effort to util¬ 
ize those already built rather than 
building new. The census of 1010 
shows that the value of farm buildings 
is nearly one-quarter that of the land 
from which the revenue is derived to 
support them. The present excessive 
cost of building material gives an in¬ 
centive to the use of material at hand 
before buying new. All of these lead 
to a study of the conditions on the farm 
and generally point to the moving and 
combining of outlying barns as the 
solution of this need for more room. 
METHODS OF MOVING.—Four 
general methods are in common use for 
moving buildings. In one the building 
is torn down and then re-erected on 
the new site. This usually leads to 
considerable waste of material. In 
another the building is raised by means 
of jacks, and after arranging suitable 
timbering under it. lowered onto trucks and hauled 
to the place desired. A third method quite gener¬ 
ally us(>d for farm buildings is to raise the building 
by means of jacks and place heavy timbers length¬ 
wise under the sills. A track of planks is laid be¬ 
neath and also in front of, these timbers. Hard¬ 
wood rollers about six inches in diameter are placed 
between these timbers and the planks, the building 
lowered onto them and pulled forward by means 
of a horse or team hitched to a “crab” or capstan. 
1 lie rollers mentioned constitute a rough roller 
bearing between the shoes and the track of plank, 
i he building is guided in the proper direction by 
the position of the capstan and by knocking the 
rollers around at right angles to the desired direc¬ 
tion by means of sledges. 
ARRANGEMENT of ROLLERS.—The general 
■iiiangement of these members is shown quite clcar- 
■' in the cut, Fig. ITS, (A i is the timber placed 
lengthwise of the sill upon which the building rests 
d runs. (ID (B) are the hard wood rollers and 
1 the plank track. As the building moves for¬ 
ward the planks and rollers left at the rear are 
i-;i:i forward and placed in front of the timber 
(A), the end being made slanting like the nose of 
a sled to receive the rollers easily. (D) shows a 
support placed across the sills to help carry the in¬ 
terior weight of the building. Another cut, Fig. 
177, shows the capstan used. It will be noted that 
the chain used for drawing the building is at the 
bottom of the winding drum. In use it is kept at 
this point by the driver who seats himself at (A) 
and after giving the chain two or three wraps 
around the drum, to get the needed grip, pulls the 
slack end back as fast as it is released. In this 
way there are never more than the two or three 
turns of the chain on the drum, the pull is kept at 
the lowest point of the capstan and there is little ten¬ 
dency for it to tip over. The chain shown does not 
run directly to the building unless the building is 
a small light one, but to a system of pulleys that 
further reduce the speed and gives an increased 
pulling force. 
OTHER METHODS.—The last cut. Fig. 181, 
shows a building, or section of one being moved 
across the field to its new location. Large buildings 
are often cut into sections, as this one has been, 
making them much easier to handle. Note the 
bracing from plate to opposite sill by means of 
THE ROWER PLANT—CHAIN AND DRUM. Fig. 177 
METHOD OF MOVING BUILDING. Fig. 178. 
chains. A fourth method sometimes used for small 
buildings is to jack them up, place them on peeled 
skids or sleds, and move them in Winter over the 
snow and ice. Either of the last two methods is 
the one generally used for moving farm buildings 
as not so much equipment is needed as in the sec¬ 
ond method given. 
PREPARING THE FOUNDATION.—In prepar¬ 
ing the foundation on which the building is to rest 
in its new location concrete is quite commonly used. 
A trench is dug from a foot to 18 inches in width 
and extending down to a firm soil below frost. This 
can be filled with a mixture of cement and gravel 
varying from 1:5 to 1:8, depending upon the quality 
of gravel that can be obtained and the loading to 
which the wall will he subjected. Usually the 1 
mixture is sufficiently strong for this purpose 
3\ bile placing this embed as many field stones 
possible, seeing that all the spaces between them 
are filled with the concrete, which should be mixed 
rather wet. as the earth wall of the trench will ab¬ 
sorb considerable of its moisture. Using these 
stones in the lower foundation wall will result 
the wall 50% stones. Near the surface of the ground 
the proportion of cement in the mixture might be 
increased somewhat and stones so embedded in it 
that they project above the surface of this wall, 
forming a grip for the remainder which can be built 
after the building is placed. 
ARRANGEMENT OF BTJTLDING.—As most of 
these old buildings are of the heavy type of framing 
the sills are usually 10 to 12 inches square. It is 
inconvenient to make the foundation wall above 
ground narrower than the sill, so as it has to be one 
foot in thickness a 1 :6 mixture will probably be 
amply strong unless it has to be built to a consider¬ 
able height. The best plan is to locate the building 
at the desired height and then grade around it. 
Settling of the soil will then not affect the building. 
Where grading has to be done first as under a floor, 
the filling should he well wetted down and tamped 
before laying the concrete to prevent its settling 
and cracking. Inside posts should be supported by 
piers built beneath the floor, not by the floor itself. 
This pier may extend to the top of the finished floor 
or above it if desired, but should not be a part of if. 
As a means of increasing capacity sometimes a base 
ment is added, the posts are lengthened, or a gam¬ 
brel roof of the self-supporting type is 
made to take the place of the old pitch 
or gable roof with which the building 
was covered. 
INCRE AS ING SPACE.—Increa sing 
the length of the post increases the hay 
storage capacity more than the ratio 
expressed by the length of the post 
after increasing it. divided by its 
former length, i.e., doubling the length 
of the post will more than double the 
hay storage capacity, other things be¬ 
ing equal. The hay will be packed 
more firmly in the bottom of the mow. 
The gambrel roof increases storage 
room mainly because it is self-support¬ 
ing, and permits the removal of tim¬ 
bers that tend to prevent the hay from 
settling. Then too, if the old roof is 
of a rather flat pitch, which is quite 
commonly the case in old barns, quite 
an addition is made to the actual room 
by the replacing of the old roof by one 
of the gambrel type. The diagrams, 
Fig. 170 and ISO,, show two pitches 
that are in common use. In both, the 
rafters for the top and bottom pitches 
are the same but are turned end for 
end. The lengths and cuts for these 
can be obtained by direct measurement 
from a drawing made to scale as in the 
diagrams shown, or by using a straight 
edge and chalk and line, the diagram 
may be laid out to full size on a barn 
or mow floor, one-half of it being all 
that is necessary to obtain the lengths 
and cuts of the pieces from. 
The first roof is laid out with the 
angles shown on the left hand side of 
the cut. Using the rise and run of the 
rafters in terms of the fractional parts of the span 
as shown on the right of this diagram will give 
practically the same shape roof. The second meth¬ 
od gives a roof with somewhat more storage room 
but with a top pitch rather flat for shingles. These 
pitches are sometimes changed by making the bot¬ 
tom rafters longer and the top pitch steeper but 
usually at the expense of the appearance of the 
roo f- ROBERT H. SMITH. 
Canton (N. Y.) Agricultural School. 
:S 
is 
in 
saving considerable cement—it is possible to make 
FUTURE COMMERCIAL APPLE ORCHARD. 
F OR quite a number of years I have set only 
well-formed trees in my orchards, buying more 
trees than T wished to set, and selling those I 
did not use for what I could get. A very large part 
of these trees were grown one or more years be¬ 
fore setting in nursery rows, where the tops were 
trimmed to form a well-balanced tree. If this could 
not be done they were never set in the orchard. In 
visiting other orchards, and with some experience 
in selling trees I have been surprised to see how 
many people will buy trees simply because they are 
cheap, to set in commercial orchards. The up-to- 
