Logistics issues!

One thing I had failed to fully consider was exactly how much material goes into a SCIPS house.  EPS foam is wonderful insulation but when every panel has 9.5 inches of foam it really adds up.

Background:  the SCIPS materials from GCT will add up to five tractor-trailer loads.  This is broken down into two separate orders:  two loads to be followed by three loads.

   Challenge number one was getting the material to the property.  The home-site is on a small private road.  A very small private road.  Deliveries from GCT were originally scheduled to arrive on 52-foot flatbed trailers; however after the dispatcher visited the property he and Larry worked with GCT to fit everything on 48-foot trailers instead.  I was worried that the drivers would not be able to get the truck into the property so had made arrangements to use the parking lot of the community center to unload if it became necessary.  Luckily both truck drivers were skilled enough to back from a narrow two-lane road onto a narrow one-lane road so we didn’t have to go to the backup plan.  However it was quite a sight to see. 

    We had just enough room for one car to get by once the truck was positioned. 

Challenge number two was getting the material off the truck and stored on the property.  There were three types of materials: 

• ·         the panels (bulky but light),
• ·         pallets of wire mesh (small and not too heavy) and
•            pallets of mortar mix (small and very heavy).

 The first big limitation was that the forklift we had could only handle one ton loads and there were two tons of mortar on each pallet.  This meant that half the bags on each pallet had to be manually offloaded to a separate pallet before the remainder of the pallet could be unloaded.  It also doubled the amount of space we needed for storing the material. 

   The next problem was that the driveway was too narrow for the forklift to move the panels from the unloading area to the storage area.  Most of the panels in the first shipment are 18’10” tall.  This meant that the panels had to be taken from the truck, unstrapped and moved, four at a time, to a lowboy trailer.  Since I had decided to keep as many trees as possible around the home site there was not enough room to turn the truck around so the driver had to back all the way down the the 200 yard, winding driveway with a full load, unload, and then drive back to the entrance to pick up the next load.  The only real hold-up came when the driver of the lowboy trailer locked his keys in the truck, but even so the freight company driver said we were quicker unloading than the loading process at the factory.

   After the success of unloading the first load Larry scheduled the second load for the following day and the unloading process went even quicker.

Storing the materials was simple:  we had stocked up on pallets so the mortar storage was simply a question of finding space near the home site and the planned location for the mortar pump.

  We were able to store the panels off the ground on either dunnage from the truck or 4-foot lengths of railroad tie.  The final step was to double-tarp the mortar and spread wood chips around the panels which were not on pavement, to keep the rain from splashing the red Georgia clay on them.

  Now on to placing the panels!