Legends of the Fog - Facade build Part 1

[Jim Warfield]

Couldn't you..

Build your gate/bridge lower than 14 ft. and just have a section of hinged fence beside it with open sky above that to get tall fire trucks into the place?
Or is there something else that comes into play that I am missing?
Yes bricks are alot more work than foam or whatever but if you are out in the country bricks might hold up better to the weather and to any vandalism.
Your sign is beautiful!
I don't use a plasma cutter on my metal but one can do wonders with a small grinder ($40?) and a very almost "paper" thin metal cutting wheel (DeWalt makes them)

[legendsofthefog]

Jim - I guess I never clarified about why the bridge is a bridge... basically it is not a real bridge, but it is the main road in and out of our haunt... it has a 2' concrete pipe which allows all of the water to pass through from the adjacent 40 acre field. Basically... all of the water from the haunt property passes through this one single spot... and as you said, we have 2 options... open air road (more pipe and a big base) or just make the sign higher. Thanks for the compliments on the sign... The plasma cutter is a luxury (it belongs to a good friend... all as it takes is a case of beer to use) I have those other tools... but its just not as fun!

[Jim Warfield]

Have You Looked into..

What another piece of concrete tube would cost? Sometimes somethings turn out to be alot cheaper than we think they will be.
Maybe just another 6 foot would help alot?
We had such pipe abandoned on our lot when local road construction was completed, nobody ever came back and got it, now it's buried as our landfill.
Many corrugated galvenised tubes had to be replaced around here because (I was told) the farm fertillizer rotted the bottoms out of them prematurely.
This expense was mostly paid by the county.

[legendsofthefog]

Thanks for the input...

Looks like the sign upgrades are going to be put on hold. To do it right, and the way we want, its going to have to wait until next season. I don't want to do it half ass. If you guys have any other industrial-type ideas, I'm open to suggestions.

-Patrick

[elowther]

I have had many projects like that. It's better to wait than to rush it or like you said do it half assed. When you do build it it will be to your liking and the patrons will appreciate it that much more.

Eric

[legendsofthefog]

Updates

Sorry I have been a bit of a hermit form hauntworld lately but we've been working pretty steady on the haunt. Our main objective this year is to polish and get our S* together. Here are a few updated pics of progress on our "Bridge" project. This bridge has evolved over time... it began as just short telephone poles to keep our customer's vehicles from driving off the road into a water-way that flows under our driveway. There is a 24" concrete pipe to allow water to flow through.
We then tried to go after a suspension bridge aspect for aesthetics, but there was one major thing missing.... water! Now, we're bringing water to the bridge. There will be a 6" deep pond on both sides of the bridge. This is the only foot traffic entrance and exit into the event, and it will be divided into lanes for purchasing tickets and exit traffic. More pics to come!


Due to clearance issues, we had to raise the bottom cross beam of the facade. You can still see the notches where it sat before. Now we have 14' of clearance for trucks. Last year a tri-axel dump truck smacked one of the bolts under the sign... they weren't too happy.
This picture shows us putting up the steel cable to hold our roping for the suspension bridge.

This shows the entire bridge... it is about 120' long. The guard rails are made from 100+ year old axe-cut timbers from an old barn. The roping is 1-1/2" braided hemp... I bought a spool last year at an auction.

We are digging the waterway here to grade. You can barley see the top of the concrete pipe to the left of the sign post. At the base of the sign post there is a waterproof box that will hide fog machines (which is piped underground and behind the sign)

More pictures to come! Next step is LED lighting, the box office integration and fog.

[chuck weber]

Aldino road will never be the same !!!!!!

NEW SIGN LOOKS GREAT !!! I'll be over to see you guys...... keep up the great work.

[X-Treme Torment]

Looks good Patrick. Just one question, does it ever get backed up (traffic) since there is only one way in and out? But it’s looking very nice and I’m excited to see how it goes.

[legendsofthefog]

facade

Looks good Patrick. Just one question, does it ever get backed up (traffic) since there is only one way in and out? But it’s looking very nice and I’m excited to see how it goes.

This facade is just for foot traffic now. We have moved our event footprint a few times before we (hopefully) got it right. The bridge is 22' wide. 8' for exiting traffic, 6' for online tickets and 8' for box office purchases. With 4 windows at our box office our ticket lines move pretty fast. We will see what this year's lines look like out front, we may need to make adjustments in the future. Last year we only had about 1 hour that our box office line was crazy long.
We are working on the right side of the bridge soon, we are building a new roadway for vehicle traffic (no customers) that will make the barrier for the second pond on the right. We don't need to dig for this side, we just need to build up the bank.

[legendsofthefog]

Bridge pic updates

Thought I would post some updates for the bridge. I think it is safe to say that we're going to leave it alone for a while. I don't have stellar pics of this project at night... but you get the idea. We found an old barn gutter which now serves as a trough under the sign and we used a LED rope light to uplight the sign. We bought some cheap truck tool boxes form tractor supply to serve as outdoor cabinets to conceal electric, fog machines, and other electronics. All wiring, fog, and low voltage lines are hidden in plumbing and electrical PVC.

Overall the project worked very well. We had three lines the length of the bridge to separate online ticketing customers from cash and credit customers. Additionally, the vehicle traffic road which goes around the bridge served its purpose well, and this year we eliminated any foot/vehicle traffic issues.

Legends-of-the-fog-facade-2011-hw.jpg

This was the bridge on a foggy morning.

The following is a picture of the box office. When this project started, it was a blackbear shed! This was my mom's project this summer... If anyone is interested I can post this as a separate thread... tons of work put into this project... but most of it was simplistic, just time consuming.

Legends-of-the-fog-box-office-hw.jpg