Hello!
New here, and working on plans to convert a grain bin into a public restroom and honeymoon suite as part of a barn wedding venue site. The grain bin is 30 feet in diameter and about 3 stories high. It is on a good slab, no cracks, above grade by about 8 inches on one side and about 15 inches on the opposite,
I have a lay out of restrooms on the first floor, that includes men’s and women’s rest rooms. Second floor will be honeymoon suite with shower, toilet sink. This is planned for year round use, so will be heated and cooled.
This is located in central Iowa, where hot, cold, dry and humid all happen. There will be a sand-pit septic system installed. I am not doing this myself, but I only get head-scratching when I talk to contractors. It is the retrofitting that seems to be the most confusing.
How do I plumb this? Is there a reason to not just plumb *over* the slab and insulate well? If trenching needed, how deep? seems impossible, but then I think it is just because I don’t know the correct work-around.
I welcome all ideas, as I have none!
Thanks in advance for your input.
Replies
grain bin?
Obviously, all I know and see is what you have posted. That being said, is this one of thoes "build it and they will come" deals?
A professional plumber will know how to properly plumb this project. Hire one.
Most decent larger plumbers today have a horizontal boring machine to get you where you want to go. That would be option #1. Option two would be sawing out the slab where you want to run pipes and laying them in a trench that way.
Wall hung toilets.
I've often used wall hung toilets when cutting the floor was difficult or impossible. You could then just raise the floor on the shower and not have to raise the whole thing. Wall hung toilets can discharge either horizontally or vertically. Horizontal discharge allows running the waste line through a wall to the outside of the structure. You often see wall hungs in public restrooms with flush valves, but they come in tank models as well. As a benefit, mopping the floor is sure easy.
That your structure is/was/soon-to-not-be a grain bin has no bearing on the issue. You've got a slab on grade metal building and you need some first floor piping done. You might as well cut the slab and dig because even with boring you'll have to do a little digging anyway. I can't believe that any competent general contractor would scratch his head over this one.
Cutting the slab will cost chump change compared to installing windows and code approved doors.
Before you go too far, consider your insulation scheme. It might make sense to lay foamboard on the slab with concrete or some sort of sheet goods over it, in which case some/all of the plumbing could be simply "buried" in the foam.
In any case, before you go much farther find out how thick the slab is. It may be that the "foundation" is just around the edges, and the center is just a "rat slab" only an inch or two thick.
And while you're doing that, consider whether the foundation is sufficient to meet code for an inhabited structure.
If it were me I'd go under the slab.
If you go on top, you have to figure a way to keep it encapsulated outside the grain bin so it won't freeze. If you go underground it's more like a typical house.
Grain isn't typically dangerous because of depth. It's more a function of moving grain.
When grain is stationary it's fairly stable to walk on. But if you enter a grain bin while the unloading auger is running, the grain can become like quicksand. That's typically how people end up getting suffocated in grain bins.
In rare cases grain can crust over. Grain is removed from the bin, leaving a void under the crust. When someone walks on the crusted grain it can collapse and bury them.
Yet there are many cases where the person is trapped & people trying to help cannot keep them from being buried. I'm guessing that, in those cases where the auger was (foolishly) running the first thing the people do is stop it. Grain in a bin is unstable.
Thanks!
Thanks to all who have replied. I appreciate the time you have taken to think about this project.
The bin has a FULL slab. There are/were three of bins, two are gone and I have had to get rid of the concrete! This one has no cracks and is empty, hasn't been used for 2 years. Time to repurpose, I'd say.
However, it turns out, I can't have ADA bathrooms outside of the venue in my state. So, I have to move them to the barn. But, I still plan to use the bin as a honeymoon suite/guest house. So plumbing will need to happen, including kitchen stuff.
Insulation will be spray foam. I have not contacted a 'concrete guy' yet and didn't know if I should get advice from contractor, plumber, or concrete company. It sounds like everything that is a work-around: find out who will be doing the end result (plumber) see how they want to configure things, and figure out who is best able to do this.
But now I have other things to consider when talking with them all.
I will let ya'll know how it goes.
Glenace
grain bin?
User: I not trying to be unfriendly or humorous or antything, but respectively interested.
I can (even at my age) sorta understand the honeymood thing, but what is it that creates the need for his & her public restrooms. What is the draw? Where is this? What happening? What is your picture not showing. What are we not seeing?
Thanks, Courious
The wedding barn is the draw
Hidden away in the inital post is a passing reference to a wedding barn. My inital thought was to put the restrooms in the bin, but our code will not allow them to be outside the venue. So now the bin will be a guest house/honeymoon suite.
You are right, just building public restrooms in a grain bin would not be much of a draw!
Glenace
So do you still have a question about the plumbing, or have your questions evaporated?
not exactly evaporated...
...but seem to be drying up. But this discussion has helped tremendously. Thanks
Glenace,
One of my regular clients did this to house his Hispanic farm workers. He just framed up a floor for the bin and routed the plumbing under it. I didn't do it since he wanted cheap and we ain't cheap.
He calls it his MexiCan.
KK