My engine room is still in progress, but here's what I'm doing.
We live on an old farmstead in central Kansas. One of my outbuildings is an old red barn. As i was poking around in it, I noticed that one end had some concrete footings. I excavated them. It turned out to be an old milk parlor. So when i was done with the big dig, I had two parallel trenches . One was 3 feet wide, 24 feet long, and 10 inches deep. The other was 13 inches wide, 8 inches deep, and 24 feet long. They are separated by a 25 inch wide concrete walkway, also 24 feet long.
I needed a lot of space, since I have engines coming through here from time to time. I wanted to be able to mount multiple engines and isolate them from each other. I ended up with 5 pads. First I bought a bunch of railroad ties, and cut them in half. That left me with timbers that were 6 1/2 by 8 1/2 inches by 4 1/2 feet. Next i bedded those ties four across, laid on edge, in a layer of rock screenings from a local quarry. Screenings are a mixture of sizes, 3/8 inch down to fines, and when they compact they form a tightly locked mass of compacted rock. In the narrow trench i laid another half tie, also bedded in screenings. When that layer was done, I had 5 pads roughly 5 by 7 feet. I separated the pads from each other with more railroad ties at right angles to the parallel ties. Then I moved in another load of screenings and covered everything.
The purpose of the screenings is to add mass, and to link the ties together as the screenings settle and compact. I vibrated the individual pads by bolting a timber across the rows, fastening it to each railroad tie, and then bolting a Changfa 175 engine to the timber. That's one of the smaller Changfas, and it's not dynamically balanced. Which means it shakes when it runs. Which is how I vibrated the rock screenings to compact them. When i was done with all five pads, the rock screenings had settled quite a bit so i spread another layer of them and did it again. By the time that process was done, the railroad ties were nicely linked to each other by compacted rock screenings. I laid one more thin layer on top, as a substrate for the next layer.
Now came the fun part. At right angles to the railroad ties, I laid 3 x 12x 7 foot bridge plank. The planks are green rough-sawn oak (which is pretty affordable here in the midwest, from Missouri sawmills) Repeated the Changfa shakedown, added a little more screenings, and then I lag bolted every bridge plank to every railroad tie, 5 lags in all on each plank.
That's where it is now. Each pad is 10 inches thick, 5 feet wide by 7 feet, with a big load of gravel integrated into it. Overall i used about 4 tons of screenings.
Now i am finishing a ramp on one end, where I can back a trailer up onto the pad to load and unload engines. More ties, screenings, and bridge plank. It slants to the ground outside the barn, so I used pressure treated timbers.
Next I'll insulate the walls of the barn for sound proofing. The pads are isolated from the walls. In the rest of the barn I'll build an extended workshop for engines and oilseed presses in there. And in the hayloft, a wood working shop.
The electricity from the engine shed will come to my house by buried power line, into a small wash house that houses my batteries and inverters.
That's probably more than you all wanted to know, but it's been a big buttload of work and I'm glad to have it as far along as I do.
This new topic is about the ideal ENGINE ROOM.
Please share your ideas so we can all build better power plants.
I just picked up a free 250 gallon outside home heating oil tank. It is pretty rusty on the outside, but looks solid. If it passes inspection I'll paint it up nice and use it for the outside fuel STORAGE TANK, Someday i could get a transfer pump and filter to move fuel to the DAY TANK. Meanwhile I could just put the DAY TANK under the STORAGE TANK valve to fill it up.
The DAY TANK is an old 6 gallon twin hose Johnson outboard tank, which will have both the supply and return lines, so plumbing is easy, and the fire / spill potential is less than using from the 250 gallon tank.
I think others before have mentioned that these engines should not be up against a wall. My corner of the groj that I call the engine room did place the left end of the crankshaft about 3 inches from the wall. NOT GOOD I couldn't even take the flywheel off without dismounting the engine frome the generator frame.
I have an automotive radiator for cooling, But I've seen those old cast iron home heat radiators, Iv'e just gotta have those! they look like LISTER all over! Especially in Hunter green.
You can see my set up in the coppermine gallery (before I took it apart for sand removal and a sub-frame upgrade)
A cheap secure engine room could be built out of a 20 foot intermodal shipping container. They do not cost much. When you are not around you could lock the doors up tight. Being made of steel,(with a wood floor) you could weld in the exhaust pipe mounts, cooling lines & wire penetrations etc. The engine beds could span the wood and connect to the steel side frames...? Or be isolated? If you built everything on the inside it could be portable
Scott E