Testing Old Slats for strength

jfh

HI All, i reckon this could be a fairly common problem as there's a lot of slatted houses moving in years. how do you test to see if there's cracks?
our slats are there from the 80's so got to be near end of life, look fine from the top, but hard to tell without getting into the tank & looking from underneath. which i'm not going to do.
can an ultrasound machine be hired out?

patsy_mccabe

Would an inspection mirror with a light do?
http://www.amazon.com/General-Tools-Instruments-80557-Telescoping/dp/B00563TKB6

jimini0

Contact your local university, plenty of engineering students looking for practical experience. Was working in Liverpool and
We had to test a small concrete foot bridge last year. 2 engineer students came out with a fancy ultra sound thing. Don't know how it worked. But bridge was structurally sound.

blue5000

Put two bulls that are not used to each other in on the slats, if they don't break then the slats are ok for another year, and if one breaks......... take the bulls off the slats.

Sam Kade

blue5000 wrote: »

Put two bulls that are not used to each other in on the slats, if they don't break then the slats are ok for another year, and if one breaks......... take the bulls off the slats.

Or out of the tank

farmerjj

God blue hope your joking about putting the bulls in together!!

jfh

blue5000 wrote: »

Put two bulls that are not used to each other in on the slats, if they don't break then the slats are ok for another year, and if one breaks......... take the bulls off the slats.

Only have one bull, might borrow one of you for testing purposes ;-)

jfh

jimini0 wrote: »

Contact your local university, plenty of engineering students looking for practical experience. Was working in Liverpool and
We had to test a small concrete foot bridge last year. 2 engineer students came out with a fancy ultra sound thing. Don't know how it worked. But bridge was structurally sound.

That's a really good idea, might branch out with a business :-)

Good loser

I'd say gang slats are fairly resilient. Unless the top sags.

A relation had two steel bars drop out the bottom of the end rib of one gang slat (late 1980's). He's working with them this year.

jfh

Good loser wrote: »

I'd say gang slats are fairly resilient. Unless the top sags.

A relation had two steel bars drop out the bottom of the end rib of one gang slat (late 1980's). He's working with them this year.

that sounds very risky, the new gang slats as far as i know have over 35 years in them but those slats from the 80's would not have the same spec

_Brian

jfh wrote: »

HI All, i reckon this could be a fairly common problem as there's a lot of slatted houses moving in years. how do you test to see if there's cracks?
our slats are there from the 80's so got to be near end of life, look fine from the top, but hard to tell without getting into the tank & looking from underneath. which i'm not going to do.
can an ultrasound machine be hired out?

We had cracks showing on quite a few slats in 2014, these were singles installed in maybe 1975/6.
Eventually two slats gave way with weanlin bulls on them. We were blessed that the two slats that broke were directly above a beam in the tank and they collapsed in the middle and sat onto the beam about 18inches down, no injury. In hindsight (isnt that always great) they should have been changed when the cracks showed first.

rangler1

_Brian wrote: »

We had cracks showing on quite a few slats in 2014, these were singles installed in maybe 1975/6.
Eventually two slats gave way with weanlin bulls on them. We were blessed that the two slats that broke were directly above a beam in the tank and they collapsed in the middle and sat onto the beam about 18inches down, no injury. In hindsight (isnt that always great) they should have been changed when the cracks showed first.

Some farmers are finding thet the beam is frigged too, so you'd want to watch that