Boomershoot infrastructure improvements

When the weather conditions are just right Boomershoot Mecca literally rains inside because of the condensation. Last weekend I hired someone who fixed that. But first I had to get almost everything out of the shipping container. There was over 4000 pounds of chemicals, plus tables, shelves, boxes, crates, mixers, tools, and lots of other “stuff”:

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On Saturday, over the course of five hours, I converted what you see above into this:

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Outside it looked like this:

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It was a hot day. It was especially hot inside the shipping container. I had the thermometer within a few feet of the open door and out of the sun but still:

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At least it was a dry heat.

The spray foam insulation guys arrived Monday morning and went to work:

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Their equipment required 50 amps of 240V. That is 12 KW of power. My generator couldn’t supply that so I borrowed my brothers tractor and 30 KW generator:

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While I masked off the electrical stuff they masked off the shelves and lights and put about 1.5 inches of insulation on the ceiling and walls:

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We also insulated the magazine at the Taj Mahal:

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If we put dry ice in with the targets next year they will stay cold much longer this way.

Yes. The door was glued shut. The spray foam guy and I spent about 20 or 30 minutes cutting foam from the critical places so the door would actually be a door again.

Then they helped me move the chemicals and few other things back into Mecca. It took me about another four hours to get everything else back inside. It’s not pretty. It’s not neat. It’s not even functional. But everything that needs to stay dry is back inside:WP_20150803_19_42_32_ProWeb

I took a shower and was driving away from Mecca at 8:04 PM. Home is six hours away and after two stops for naps I put my head on the pillow in my own bed at exactly 3:30 AM Tuesday morning. I was at work the next morning by 9:00 AM.

When I weighed myself after getting out of the shower Tuesday morning I discovered I had lost six pounds over the weekend. For some reason I don’t eat as much as when I’m at home.

I’m sure glad this Boomershoot stuff is fun.

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14 thoughts on “Boomershoot infrastructure improvements

  1. There you go, hogging all the fun to yourself again, and not letting the rest of us in on it. But it’s much more practical exercise than a gym membership, I’d bet.

    • If you like I’ll let you know when I’m headed back over to do some more work and you can come along and play along side of me.

      Put you sleeping bag on the ground and sleep under the stars and have the squirrels run over your sleeping bag and drop pine cones on you just like me. It’ll be fun!

    • Thanks for the info.

      I’m not too concerned. There are lot of other things in Mecca that are a much greater fire risk. And unless someone does something really stupid like blocking themselves in by moving tables around no one is more than 30 feet from the door with a straight shot at the exit.

      • It’s not so much the fire risk that concerns me, it’s the flashover risk. Make sure no one blocks the exit!

        • I agree. The exit needs to be open so everyone can exit in seconds.

          During the safety briefing I do every year I tell people what to do but I probably should do fire drills so everyone has a bit of practice as well.

  2. Re: door glued shut, cut open.

    If you don’t seal the door well, you’ll have a locus of condensation where air leaks in/out of the container. If actual humidity exists up there, I guess. Here in TX car windows can condense water if the A/C is turned up high enough.

    Also, be sure you have good, oxygen containing air in there before you go in to work.

    Certainly you already considered both these minor items, but better safe than sorry.

    • The magazine has small vents both top and bottom on each side. ATF regulations require vents.

      I’m not concerned about condensation in the magazine. I’ve never seen it there. I insulated it so that if I wanted to I could keep the targets cold easier.

  3. What was the cost for the foam? Not the labor just the square feet and depth.
    We are trying to insulate the ceiling of our indoor range, mostly for sound.
    Foaming was one of the options.

    • ~1.5 inches in depth. $2.00 per square foot. But that included labor. The material cost was not broken out separately.

  4. What you might want to consider is picking up a 5gal bucket of trailer roof paint and laying it down on the roof of that thing. I say this because IF you have an actual leak in the conex roof, foaming the inside probably didn’t fix the actual leak. Which means you will end up with rusted-through roof eventually. The roof paint I’m talking about is thick, white, and usually spread with a wide squeegee

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