Several years ago my neighbor J put up the first hoop-shed any of us had seen around here. A hoop-shed is just a bunch of stock fencing bent in a semicircle, held in place with fence rails and covered with a tarp like a sort of poor man’s Quonset hut. You wouldn’t want to keep sensitive electronics in there, but it’s perfect for firewood and not bad for things like generators and other yard tools not too touchy about weather.
I predicted certain doom, claiming the first windstorm would shred the tarp and send stock fencing flying around like Zena’s RazerFrisbee.
J’s hoop-shed proved me so wrong, over such an extended period of time, that I built one for my own firewood. I never had a bit of trouble with mine, either.
But all good things must come to an end. J spent serious money on a pre-built shed to replace his motley collection of outbuildings, and the hoop-shed had to go to make room for it. Not sure he didn’t want to set it up somewhere else, he didn’t take it apart. He just pulled out the fence rails, flattened it out and weighted it down with big rocks.
Not big enough, as events proved.
The weather has been kind of nasty the past two days, more like late winter than early spring. Saturday morning the wind came up and by early afternoon it was howling as bad as I’ve ever seen it. J&H, of course, live on top of a high ridge and have to factor wind into everything they do. J probably thought he had factored it into the size of those rocks, but he wasn’t as right about that as he needed to be.
J is away for the weekend. Around three I got a call from H. “I need help!” I could barely hear her over wind noise, but she said something about how the old woodshed had attacked the new shed and could I come over right away because she couldn’t get it to stop.
Curiosity more than any sense of duty lent wings to my feet. When I got there I found that the old flattened hoop-shed had shrugged off its restraints and had indeed launched an unprovoked attack on J’s brand-new shed. Part of the fence was wrapped around the door handle while the rest, acting as a sail, was making a competent attempt to wrench the door right off its hinges.
H, half-trapped under the obstreperous thing, was trying not very successfully to keep the wind spilled out of the tarp and cut it away from the fencing with scissors.
This is exactly why your Uncle Joel carries a big knife, and tries to remember to keep it sharp. With her now free to wrestle the aggressive hoop-shed to the ground, I cut the cords that held the tarp to the fencing. Once separated, the two parts were much easier to deal with. H went for a couple of wire-cutters, and we separated that big block of fencing into its four original sections, stacked them, and stuffed the tarp into the new – and miraculously undamaged – shed.
“[J’s] probably gonna have a fit,” she said.
Oh yes… factoring in the wind is a chore. I bought and constructed a nice all metal storage shed once when I lived in the desert. A month or so later, one of those “dust devils” came along and destroyed it. It was twisted so bad, it probably would have screwed itself into the sand if the “devil” had paused there a few moments. It was too badly damaged to even salvage much that had been stored in it… what little didn’t blow away.
Had something similar happen in Wyoming with friends’ giant new quonset-style horse-riding arena. The building was open on both ends, which I expect was the problem. One wind storm and one end of that arena was nothing but treacherous twists of metal. Sounds as if the tarped version is actually a little more resistant and safer.
Good story as usual, Joel.
This line here: “Curiosity more than any sense of duty lent wings to my feet.” just tickled the crap outta me for some reason, and now I’m cleaning coffee off my keyboard!