Replacing a Springhouse Floor

Nothing quite as pleasant as beginning a new long-term project. In this case, a 19th Century springhouse, converted to a wheelwright shop, offers a unique look at life in early rural and industrial America. The floor is the first step for the sake of safety and making the rest of the work easier to manage. Without it, working off of a ladder would have made the work far more dangerous and difficult.

[@RenovationFarmhouse]

Good work. Looking forward to seeing the next episode.

[@jeffs5093]

Looking forward to seeing how this turns out.

[@davidreed2135]

everytime i see a job like that,the first thing i think is where are the bees at,cool video as always

[@HiraethRestorations]

I think all the bees are at my house. I’ve been lucky out on job sites so far. It’s only a matter of time until I hit a nest of yellow jackets though.

[@jace2344]

Do you have any rules of thumb (or historic references) for laying plain plank floors in buildings that aren't climate controlled? Built plenty of furniture, but never laid flooring and will be doing this in a workshop in the future and didn't just want to start laying planks and banging in square nails with no prior insights. Thanks and looking forward to the next vid.

[@HiraethRestorations]

An excellent question! Generally, all my work is in replacing something that’s probably worked for over a hundred years. That makes it easy for me. With floors, I’ll copy exactly what worked before, down to the hand planed tongue and groove boards and proper nails. If it is new construction like I’m doing for myself, not climate controlled, I pretty much use the same simple methods. The key would be ensuring that there’s enough ventilation. What my practice has been is to put down green planks, screwed usually, and after they dried and shrank, I pull them up and tighten them up to close any gaps. After that initial drying and tightening, the flooring shouldn’t experience enough swelling from moisture to have any noticeable impact. But that’s mostly down to a proper balance of ventilation and protection from the elements. My recommendation would be to put your planks down with screws, see how they do for six months or so. If everything seems good, replace the screws with nails and you’re set. If the planks are swelling and shrinking more than you can tolerate, I’d try to establish better ventilation. This springhouse, I expect, will be a real challenge in this regard. So much water and humidity to contend with, I’ll probably learn a lot from the experience myself.