Building a Home in a Silo
Glenn W. Worthington
Copyright 2012 by Glenn W. Worthington
Smashwords Edition
Not every home has to be a one or two story, square, wooden structure. A home could be a five-story, round building made of clay tiles. The first floor could be a comfortable living room with a wood-burning stove. From there you could take three steps up to an entryway where you could go out the front door or start up the staircase to your left.
On the second floor you could see a compact, yet adequate, kitchen. On that same floor there could be a partition sectioning off the bathroom with its strategically arranged vanity, bathtub, and toilet.
Continuing up the stairs you could see the bedroom on the third floor, a spare bedroom on the fourth floor, and a study on the fifth floor. That top floor could have yet another four steps to take you up to the balcony platform.
This unique home not only COULD exist but actually has become a reality. Although it is now a towering monument to a dream come true, it all started with just an idea.
One October evening my brother, Terry, and I were discussing the fact that a one-level house often loses much of its heat out through the roof. We agreed that an ideal house would be one with a heater in a room on the bottom floor, with all of the other rooms stacked on top of one another. Since heat naturally rises you could just warm the bottom floor, and the heat would work its way up through the living space rather than immediately escaping through the roof.
My brother said he once considered building just such a house in an abandoned grain silo. That was a challenging thought. The main shell of the building would already be standing. So, it would be less expensive to build that fuel-efficient home rather than building one from the ground up.
Shortly after that discussion I went "silo shopping."
Silos are the kind of things you hardly notice until you go out looking for them. But when you do, they seem to be everywhere. At least they are in southeast Kansas. But not just any silo would do for me. I needed one that was not being used, yet was structurally sound, and not too far from town.
I made a full sweep of the country roads around the town of Pittsburg, Kansas, where I was living at the time. But most of the silos I saw were made of ugly, gray, concrete blocks wrapped with rusting metal bands. After exhausting about every possibility I was headed back towards town on a different road.
I was just four miles from Pittsburg when I noticed a silo sitting on the crest of a hill way up the road. As I got closer, I could tell that this tall cylinder was different than the others I had driven past. It was made of glazed, red-clay tile that glistened in the sun.
I was interested in it. I wanted a closer look. There were no houses around, so I boldly drove up the five-hundred-foot-long drive that led from the county road to the silo. It was beautiful, it was vacant, it was close to town, and it was exactly what I was looking for.
I got out of my car and trampled through the five-foot-tall weeds that surrounded the structure. There was an opening on its south side where the grain chute had been. So, I climbed through and stood inside the hollow cylinder that I hoped would someday be my home. Looking up I saw only blue sky at the top. Obviously, one of my first jobs would be to build a roof.
I examined the tiles and judged that the structure was very sound. There was only one place, near the ground, where a few blocks were broken out. Since I would need a front door anyway, I decided to make the opening even bigger and put the door there.
In a short while I contacted the silo's owner. I shared my idea with him. He did not want to sell me any of his land or the silo. But, since he wasn't using the tall, hollow cylinder, he offered me a free, renewable, five-year lease on the silo. I accepted and planned to begin work immediately. By that time, though, it was already early November, and winter was all too close.
I started by bulldozing away the tall weeds that surrounded the silo. Then I dug a hole for the septic tank and trenches for its lateral lines. I also dug a ditch for a waterline from the silo to a nearby windmill. I knew it had a well under it, and I planned to use it as my water supply.
I wanted to put windows along the south side where the grain chute was, so I carried a sledge hammer to the top of the silo and began busting off the remaining blocks that once formed the grain chute. I took a concrete saw and cut the opening larger where the front door would go.
After that mess was cleaned up, I had two pressing projects facing me. I wanted to get the roof built before it started snowing, and I had to pour a concrete floor in the bottom of the silo before freezing temperatures arrived for good.
I split my time evenly between the two projects because they were about equal in size and urgency. Pouring the concrete floor doesn't sound like a very big job, but there was a lot to do to prepare for the pour. I had to dig out two feet of dirt by hand because I wanted to get down to a firm foundation. Two feet is deep when you are talking about an area fourteen feet in diameter.
Since I had been working on the roof half of the time, I did not get the concrete poured until mid-December. I almost waited too late. And that would have delayed construction for months.