Building Upon a Biased Foundation- GOODMORNING

Godliness: Train yourself to be godly

I know how to turn a handle on a grain mill. As a matter of fact, as big, heavy and fancy as our mill is, it didn’t even come with a manual, just a simple flyer with a blown-up picture of its component parts. Building a two-story barn…well, that is something I don’t know how to do. Even with well-laid architectural plans, I’m going to need some help. Better yet, I’m more suited to being the help, not running the show.

As it stands, my husband and I are the barn-building helpers, working with some friends with whom we share a cow who needs a roof over her head. Against great odds, the ground has been cleared, the foundation poured and set, and the frame is going up. I am deeply enjoying the process, observing how each part is crucial to the integrity of the structure as a whole. It would not be an overstatement to say that each piece is individually handled, individually measured, individually cut, and individually leveled.

The aspect of a large structure remaining plumb is critical. “Plumb” is vertical, and must be in direct relation to the foundation, which is horizontal. If each piece is not plumb to the foundation, the entire structure would be off balance. In fact, the degree to which a building is off becomes magnified as the structure rises. Picture any angle that is not a right angle, where two lines meet at the vertex (the point) and they are close. But once you set off from that point and continue on in a straight line, you can see that the lines grow farther and farther apart. Imagine that difference in a large edifice and you can see a building that won’t have a sound future.

But what does a builder do if he knows the foundation is flawed? Our foundation is a concrete slab, prepared as well as possible, but with a slight bias, a leaning to the southwest. You can see it when it rains—water pools in one corner. Fortunately for us, our foreman, Darren, is skilled in construction and has all the necessary tools to complete the project successfully. As we worked to connect the vertical posts to the second floor foundation (the 2 x 4’s that lay horizontal to the ground floor and will hold the remainder of our barn) we used a transit, a three-legged instrument designed to correct the flaw of our unlevel concrete foundation by making sure that from there on up we were well-balanced. I can’t explain the mathematical exactness of it to you, but I get the point: With a biased foundation, the whole building would continue to follow that bias to its eventual collapse, but correcting those imperfections and putting our barn back on track would lead to a beautiful, solid structure that will endure for years.