Warehouse Collapses

[The Black Tot]

Considering this latest one on monday at OZ Tyler distillery in Owensboro... (read about it in Chuck's latest post)

 

From the outside, it really seems like not enough is being done in the field of periodic structural testing of these rack houses. Perhaps someone who knows more about it than me (odds are good!) can chime in and let us know what CAN be tested vs what can't.

 

There aren't many other types of industrial structures that seem to collapse on this scale on a regular basis, are there? We don't hear about the Proctor and Gamble toothpaste plant collapsing under the weight of a surplus of Crest pallets. Or active apartment buildings spontaneously falling down. Is it just that that's not news?

 

Is it really not possible to tell if a rackhouse is in risky condition? Should there be clear shelf-lives on rack structures?

 

Are we going to have to wait until someone DOES get hurt in one of these collapses before something serious happens? Because it would be a whole other ball game, and nobody would be saying "they're old rackhouses...whaddaya gonna do?" then.

 

If someone does eventually get hurt or killed in one of these accidents (because when you look at the aftermath of these collapses, it seems clear that somebody WILL) I feel like the investigation is going to look back unfavorably on all of these near misses and call the industry out for not taking this seriously enough.

 

With most of America's rack houses straining to to their capacity limits, surely the next one can't be far off?

[BusterChestnut]

Rackhouse or rickhouse? Never heard rackhouse before

[fosmith]

I've read that many of these wooden rickhouses have infestations of powderpost beetles that are eating the wood support beams (no pun intended) slowly weakening them until they cannot support the weight of the barrels.  This sounds like a pretty serious problem that doesn't seem to be getting the attention it deserves. 

[JCwhammie]

3 hours ago, BusterChestnut said:

Rackhouse or rickhouse? Never heard rackhouse before

The names are interchangeable. 

https://www.tastings.com/Drinkipedia/Rackhouse-Definition.aspx

[The Black Tot]

3 hours ago, BusterChestnut said:

Rackhouse or rickhouse? Never heard rackhouse before

Rackhouse. Each individual barrel support is a rick. There are many ricks in a rack. 

 

Squire taught me this years ago. I now pass it on to you.

 

People call them Rickhouses all the time. Nobody will generally care. After all, we can't get palate, pallet, palette straight.

 

Rackhouses do get re-ricked, because they are putting new ricks in the racks.

 

 

[smokinjoe]

And, Jack Daniel’s calls them “Barrel Houses”, just to be a pain in the ass...  

 

[The Black Tot]

In light of this thread, we should be calling them Ricketyhouses...

[kcgumbohead]

When I heard of this I assumed it was a recent build as O.Z. Tyler is new, it is in fact a legacy Medley rackhouse from the 60s according to Chuck.  Once the cause is investigated it will be interesting to see if this beetle infestation that has been mentioned was a possibility or some other cause. Chuck did also mention an extremely wet spring.  With the reported amount of weight in a full rackhouse and excess water I wonder if a cause might be unstable ground? This will be an interesting one to follow, VERY fortunate no one was injured...yet.

[flahute]

7 hours ago, The Black Tot said:

Considering this latest one on monday at OZ Tyler distillery in Owensboro... (read about it in Chuck's latest post)

 

From the outside, it really seems like not enough is being done in the field of periodic structural testing of these rack houses. Perhaps someone who knows more about it than me (odds are good!) can chime in and let us know what CAN be tested vs what can't.

 

There aren't many other types of industrial structures that seem to collapse on this scale on a regular basis, are there? We don't hear about the Proctor and Gamble toothpaste plant collapsing under the weight of a surplus of Crest pallets. Or active apartment buildings spontaneously falling down. Is it just that that's not news?

 

Is it really not possible to tell if a rackhouse is in risky condition? Should there be clear shelf-lives on rack structures?

 

Are we going to have to wait until someone DOES get hurt in one of these collapses before something serious happens? Because it would be a whole other ball game, and nobody would be saying "they're old rackhouses...whaddaya gonna do?" then.

 

If someone does eventually get hurt or killed in one of these accidents (because when you look at the aftermath of these collapses, it seems clear that somebody WILL) I feel like the investigation is going to look back unfavorably on all of these near misses and call the industry out for not taking this seriously enough.

 

With most of America's rack houses straining to to their capacity limits, surely the next one can't be far off?

All of the old rickhouses have plumb bobs hanging about 1/2" from a marker stone on the ground level that has a line or mark indicating the initial alignment. If the plumb bob starts to move off the mark you know the rickhouse is leaning. They call it creeling I believe.

If a rickhouse is leaning, that means the lateral stability provided by cross bracing is inadequate. Since this is a thing that everyone seems to look for in old rickhouses it's realistic to say that the engineers and builders of those old rickhouses didn't fully understand or design for lateral stability.

 

Rickhouse construction is unique in that the ricks themselves are the structure of the building (for most of them). There's been talk of powder post beetle issues since the bourbontruth blogged about it a few years ago. It was laughed off and dismissed at the time. Powder post beetles do mark their presence with bore holes and sawdust so if you have an issue I'd think it would be obvious unless all the damage is in the crawlspaces which may not get inspected very regularly. (Just speculating).

These are old structures (the ones that collapsed) and were built before the widespread advent of pressure treated wood so it's possible the wood is experiencing rot of some sort. The bottoms of these buildings are a very humid environment. (Aside: it's possible that PT wood is not desirable to begin with as the close proximity of those chemicals to the barrels may impart contamination. That's a good question for @WhiskeyBlender )

 

When Barton had the collapse last year it was mentioned that the extremely wet Spring may have been to blame. The side of the rackhouse that initially collapsed was on the downhill side that sloped down to the creek. It's plausible that subsurface drainage coming from higher ground had saturated that soil for a prolonged enough time period that it lessened the maximum bearing pressure of that soil which would cause the soil to give way under a full load. 

It's been another extremely wet Spring in Kentucky but the photos I've seen show that the OZ Tyler rackhouse is on flat ground so I'm not sure that the same plausibility exists. It is possible that the ground beneath could become saturated enough that a footing beneath a post could sink which might lead to a cascade failure. Again, just speculating. (I'm an architect so it's educated speculating). 

 

If it's rot, than what is happening is that the wood posts at the ground level are simply weakened to a point where their compressive strength is being overcome by the load of all the barrels above. This would lead to a catastrophic failure where they look good one second and crumble the next. This load is spread across thousands of posts however so I'd need an engineer to calculate how realistic a possibility this is.

 

[The Black Tot]

36 minutes ago, flahute said:

All of the old rickhouses have plumb bobs hanging about 1/2" from a marker stone on the ground level that has a line or mark indicating the initial alignment. If the plumb bob starts to move off the mark you know the rickhouse is leaning. They call it creeling I believe.

If a rickhouse is leaning, that means the lateral stability provided by cross bracing is inadequate. Since this is a thing that everyone seems to look for in old rickhouses it's realistic to say that the engineers and builders of those old rickhouses didn't fully understand or design for lateral stability.

 

Rickhouse construction is unique in that the ricks themselves are the structure of the building (for most of them). There's been talk of powder post beetle issues since the bourbontruth blogged about it a few years ago. It was laughed off and dismissed at the time. Powder post beetles do mark their presence with bore holes and sawdust so if you have an issue I'd think it would be obvious unless all the damage is in the crawlspaces which may not get inspected very regularly. (Just speculating).

These are old structures (the ones that collapsed) and were built before the widespread advent of pressure treated wood so it's possible the wood is experiencing rot of some sort. The bottoms of these buildings are a very humid environment. (Aside: it's possible that PT wood is not desirable to begin with as the close proximity of those chemicals to the barrels may impart contamination. That's a good question for @WhiskeyBlender )

 

When Barton had the collapse last year it was mentioned that the extremely wet Spring may have been to blame. The side of the rackhouse that initially collapsed was on the downhill side that sloped down to the creek. It's plausible that subsurface drainage coming from higher ground had saturated that soil for a prolonged enough time period that it lessened the maximum bearing pressure of that soil which would cause the soil to give way under a full load. 

It's been another extremely wet Spring in Kentucky but the photos I've seen show that the OZ Tyler rackhouse is on flat ground so I'm not sure that the same plausibility exists. It is possible that the ground beneath could become saturated enough that a footing beneath a post could sink which might lead to a cascade failure. Again, just speculating. (I'm an architect so it's educated speculating). 

 

If it's rot, than what is happening is that the wood posts at the ground level are simply weakened to a point where their compressive strength is being overcome by the load of all the barrels above. This would lead to a catastrophic failure where they look good one second and crumble the next. This load is spread across thousands of posts however so I'd need an engineer to calculate how realistic a possibility this is.

 

I love you man and this is a very honest challenge:

 

When it kills a man, are we going to plausibly be able to blame a wet spring?

 

I think if it's rot there should be testing available to nip this in the bud, bud.

 

 

[GaryT]

1 hour ago, The Black Tot said:

I love you man and this is a very honest challenge:

 

When it kills a man, are we going to plausibly be able to blame a wet spring?

 

I think if it's rot there should be testing available to nip this in the bud, bud.

 

 

 

Yep.  I mean - one guy?  C'mon . . . 

 

I did have the same thoughts though - and wonder if this is going to trigger some type of evaluations.  I often remind folks at work that "while two points create a line, don't call it a trend" - it is odd that both of these happened within a year (and everyone I've asked has never heard of it before now; excluding the BT Tornado which didn't collapse the structure, or the fire at HH which disintegrated the structures).  

 

I think the cost of correction (if indeed there is a correction; without knowing the root cause of this latest one) is going to be weighed against the premium each gets to charge for the limited edition 'collapsed barrel bourbon'.

 

I think another challenge is that if the weather continues to increase in terms of the extremes (compared to norms for the last 100 yrs or so), how sturdy/strong they need to be becomes a valid question.  

 

Personally - if this starts happening with frequency, I want to be like the storm chasers . . . but with a dolly and a pick-up so I can grab a barrel  

[Mako254]

6 hours ago, smokinjoe said:

And, Jack Daniel’s calls them “Barrel Houses”, just to be a pain in the ass...  

 

 

I’ve heard Jimmy Russell say ‘storage buildin’. 

[flahute]

2 hours ago, The Black Tot said:

I love you man and this is a very honest challenge:

 

When it kills a man, are we going to plausibly be able to blame a wet spring?

 

I think if it's rot there should be testing available to nip this in the bud, bud.

 

 

If it's the wet spring theory, it raises the question of why only rickhouses. It's wet for everyone. Rickhouses are heavy for sure. Maybe they don't have adequate foundations to spread the load?

If it's rot, there are ways to test for that and you can bet every distillery is looking at this right now.

If they haven't already, every distillery should be looking into adding more cross bracing or shear walls of some kind.

These rickhouses that were all built in the post war boom may be coming up on the end of their service life as originally designed. I bet a lot of them are in need of a retrofit.

[Curtis Reed]

I’m sure the distilleries are quite aware of the problem and are not ignoring it. There is millions of dollars of whiskey in those barrels and I’m sure they are on top of it. 

Edited June 19, 2019 by Curtis Reed

[WhiskeyBlender]

3 hours ago, flahute said:

All of the old rickhouses have plumb bobs hanging about 1/2" from a marker stone on the ground level that has a line or mark indicating the initial alignment. If the plumb bob starts to move off the mark you know the rickhouse is leaning. They call it creeling I believe.

If a rickhouse is leaning, that means the lateral stability provided by cross bracing is inadequate. Since this is a thing that everyone seems to look for in old rickhouses it's realistic to say that the engineers and builders of those old rickhouses didn't fully understand or design for lateral stability.

 

Rickhouse construction is unique in that the ricks themselves are the structure of the building (for most of them). There's been talk of powder post beetle issues since the bourbontruth blogged about it a few years ago. It was laughed off and dismissed at the time. Powder post beetles do mark their presence with bore holes and sawdust so if you have an issue I'd think it would be obvious unless all the damage is in the crawlspaces which may not get inspected very regularly. (Just speculating).

These are old structures (the ones that collapsed) and were built before the widespread advent of pressure treated wood so it's possible the wood is experiencing rot of some sort. The bottoms of these buildings are a very humid environment. (Aside: it's possible that PT wood is not desirable to begin with as the close proximity of those chemicals to the barrels may impart contamination. That's a good question for @WhiskeyBlender )

 

When Barton had the collapse last year it was mentioned that the extremely wet Spring may have been to blame. The side of the rackhouse that initially collapsed was on the downhill side that sloped down to the creek. It's plausible that subsurface drainage coming from higher ground had saturated that soil for a prolonged enough time period that it lessened the maximum bearing pressure of that soil which would cause the soil to give way under a full load. 

It's been another extremely wet Spring in Kentucky but the photos I've seen show that the OZ Tyler rackhouse is on flat ground so I'm not sure that the same plausibility exists. It is possible that the ground beneath could become saturated enough that a footing beneath a post could sink which might lead to a cascade failure. Again, just speculating. (I'm an architect so it's educated speculating). 

 

If it's rot, than what is happening is that the wood posts at the ground level are simply weakened to a point where their compressive strength is being overcome by the load of all the barrels above. This would lead to a catastrophic failure where they look good one second and crumble the next. This load is spread across thousands of posts however so I'd need an engineer to calculate how realistic a possibility this is.

 

@flahute, your theory is the best I've seen so far from anyone. What I'm hearing from my industry friends, and I don't know that this is an absolute fact yet so please don't quote me, but they're saying that old rick houses like this one, which was built in 1967, are considered historic structures, and are therefore exempt from all building codes. This rick house was apparently renovated at some point, although I'm not sure exactly when that occurred. 

[smokinjoe]

37 minutes ago, flahute said:

 

These rickhouses that were all built in the post war boom may be coming up on the end of their service life as originally designed. I bet a lot of them are in need of a retrofit.

This may simply be the reality.  Perhaps, bugs, moisture, rot, and just plain time and usage, all combine to contribute to this inevitability.  I’ve said before, that it’s possible that the huge number of rick houses that have recently, and are going up currently, are not just meant to handle additionally produced whiskey from this boom, but also replace some of these compromised structures when/where needed.  

Edited June 20, 2019 by smokinjoe

[flahute]

14 minutes ago, WhiskeyBlender said:

@flahute, your theory is the best I've seen so far from anyone. What I'm hearing from my industry friends, and I don't know that this is an absolute fact yet so please don't quote me, but they're saying that old rick houses like this one, which was built in 1967, are considered historic structures, and are therefore exempt from all building codes. This rick house was apparently renovated at some point, although I'm not sure exactly when that occurred. 

Interesting and I've seen that before with other building types so I would believe it.

This rickhouse has what appears to be new siding. The wood for the actual ricks looks newer to me than what I see in old rickhouses as well. I saw an old google satellite image that showed the rickhouse prior to being remodeled and there were gaping holes in the roof so may have had to replace some ricks.

[flahute]

11 minutes ago, smokinjoe said:

This may simply be the reality.  Perhaps, bugs, moisture, rot, and just plain time and usage, all combine to contribute to this inevitability.  I’ve said before, that it’s possible that the huge number of rick houses that have recently, and are going up currently, are not just meant to handle additionally produced whiskey from this boom, but also replace some of these compromised structures when/where needed.  

That's a very interesting take and would not surprise me if you are dead on.

[BusterChestnut]

8 hours ago, The Black Tot said:

Rackhouse. Each individual barrel support is a rick. There are many ricks in a rack. 

 

Squire taught me this years ago. I now pass it on to you.

 

People call them Rickhouses all the time. Nobody will generally care. After all, we can't get palate, pallet, palette straight.

 

Rackhouses do get re-ricked, because they are putting new ricks in the racks.

 

 

Nice thanks.