Among the advantages of living in a former railway water tower is that your ceiling is among the strongest ceilings possible - it consists of the underside of a massive water tank built to hold 43,000 gallons of water. That tank rests on absolutely massive cast iron beams at just 4 ft centres.
The ceiling easily supports our 13.5 tonne roof room and, potentially, much more besides.
We could, if we so wished, suspend enormous weights below it, not that we would particularly want to,
Some years ago in a moment of weakness I bought a rope hoist from Bretton Lord, as a youngster the star of the wonderful funny/tragic film 'Lad'. I really DO recommend you view it
It was useful for a while to hoist stuff to and from the garage/navvy hut loft but it was frankly too long for that lift so we had to deal with many metres of thick and heavy coiled-up spare rope.
Nonetheless it was a fascinating piece of yesteryear and useful kit.
As part of operation-clear-up we were worrying what to do with it when inspiration struck. We have occasional need to lift or lower heavy items between the three floors within the tower and our atrium at the south end runs the full height of the tower. So would Bretton's (very heavy) rope hoist fulfil that occasional need?
Yes, if we could devise some means of securing it to the 'ceiling' by its massive upper hook.
Well, this week the Last of the Summer Wine gang from the signal box came to the rescue. They were able to firmly wedge a section of scaffolding pole between two iron beams high above the atrium and to hang the immensely heavy block-and-tackle from it. The 68m rope turned out to be of perfect length for the lift.
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