When all you have is a backyard foundry...

I've got ice dam issues too. The kind that drops a couple ton solid slab of foot-and-a-half-thick ice onto my back porch once a year. So far nobody has been crushed. I remember having to chop it all up and shovel it all away to make room for the muller build a couple years ago when my wife had enough of it living in the dining room... This new heating wire for the drain came with better roof clips than my old wore that I actually would use for ice dams, so I got that wire put up properly at last too last night.

Joe, we are on a 1/2 acre lot, approximately. No plans for a "new" foundry, but I have lots of plans for the one I've already got!

I want to move the muller and molding bench into the back shed, the one that is not pictured (though you may have seen the front side of it if you have watched any of my casting videos). It's the shed I've been rolling the big furnace out of and setting my molds down next to leading up to now, whenever I melt and cast.

That way, I can get some space back in my other shed for storing the overflow that is starting to take over the kitchen. And the muller won't have to live outside under a BBQ cover year round. And I won't have to carry my molds so far, or up and down any rickety half-crushed-by-falling-ice porch stairs at all. It may even get me to stop using the molding bench top as a work bench! (Very handy... until you need to open it.)

Plus maybe I'll be able to keep on casting in winter. I would LOVE to melt and pour under that same roof. I actually tried that (very carefully) the other day, as a test.

Since I don't have proper ventilation set up in there, I stood just outside looking in while the furnace was running, other than dashing in with breath held, checking the melt for a second a few times. And of course when I actually poured the bronze balls.

It went really well. The rafters directly above the furnace didn't even get very warm. The noise that could be heard from outside the shed was significantly quieter than normal.

Maybe you all think I'm crazy for even thinking about this. The whole idea got into my head when I ran the small furnace inside my friend Josh's blacksmith shop on diesel, to melt copper, a few months back. He has chimneys on all his coal forges, but it was the ventilation fan up near the roofline that was able to blow out all the heated exhaust gases and keep the fresh cool air coming in through the open door to replace it.

My shed is maybe half the size of Josh's smithy, so last night I picked up an even bigger used ventilation fan I found on Kijiji, for just $20.
After seeing a smaller one that I thought would be sufficient for $60 at Princess Auto.

Plenty of tidying up and organizing to do before installing that fan.

Need to find places to stash a bunch of the junk that's cluttering things up in there now, and get rid of a bunch of it.

There's a half wall in the middle of the building because the former owners were wanting to use it as a stable and had set it up before learning the lot isn't zoned for such livestock. Chickens and turkeys are fine, but no horses, who knew? The guy across the street has a couple, but apparently his property was grandfathered in at some point to allow that. I don't want horses anyhow.

Anyhow, I plan to tear out and reuse the great big 2X10 and 12's from that half wall to build workbench tops, etc., perhaps in both sheds. There is a ton of that stuff in there that does not seem to be structural or load-bearing in any way that I have my eyes on... I noticed at Josh's that some of the interior walls were covered with square concrete patio stones. He had them held upright with some large diameter washers and lag bolts screwed into the framing of the wall between the stones, I could maybe do something like that and have some sort of insulation behind them, to really quiet things down more, and to make it more comfortable in there in the colder months.

As with all my foundry upgrades and other hobbies to date, I'm going to be working on all this evenings and weekends, a little here and a little there, as time and family permit.

Jeff