It all came down to two feet of concrete. The length of a simple stride on the sidewalk. The space it takes to toss a free throw. The distance of a good olie on a skateboard or that occupied by a newspaper rack.
This adventure began just in August, when Tanji and I went for a walk in a distant part of Freeport that was new to us. We briefly entertained building a house on a lot we liked, then fled from that idea as quickly as it had started for reasons financial and otherwise. But we still liked the neighborhood, and one night we happened on a new listing. We came, we saw and we liked, so we went for it and they accepted our offer. Oh.
But what about the coffee roaster?
That’s where the lucky two feet came in. There is a basement here, and there is room for the roaster and all the coffee and the grinder and the sealer and the rest of it. Access is good for loading in 130-150 pound bags of coffee (though something akin to a children’s slide – to be built tomorrow – will be necessary), and the big trucks that bring the coffee can turn around down the street. But the long and short of any roaster installation is where the smoke goes. Ideally the vent stack will be not too long and not too bent. It’s a pretty thick pipe, so it needs clearance. It needs to get above the roofline, and its sister pipe (from the cooling bin) needs her own path. It cannot traverse any windows. We liked the house and the basement worked, but there was exactly, precisely one place and one place only to put the roaster and the stack and it was going to involve some gymnastics.
So here I was, really liking this house but stuck with the questions of how to de-install 2,000 pounds of roaster from our existing basement, slither it through a narrow doorway, move it safely across town, lower it into a below grade basement, poke two thick holes in a thick foundation wall, maneuver two vent pipes up the wall of our new house, while building out the roaster space, installing electrics and gas and dealing with many, many unknowns.
I was faced here with the situation of believing, perhaps foolishly, in the feasibility of all of this, but then being enough of a realist to know better than to be blindly ignorant of all that could go wrong. To make this work, I needed someone with expertise in carpentry, HVAC, propane, rigging, sheet metal, electrics and plumbing. It felt like I was trying to build a highrise. Enter The Amazing Mike McNeff.
Our friend Mike’s business card says “Integrity Construction,” and when I approached him about this project, I really expected him to say no, that this one was above his pay grade. But Mike is a can-do guy who loves challenges, and much to my delight and relief, he agreed.
He measured angles and distances. He solicited, and immediately discarded the bunch of big guys with a dolly and a truck approach in favor of the overqualified but undoubtedly competent major crane company to lift the beast. He stretched his mind and his patience in coming to grips with the nuances of double wall venting. He learned about the real fun of coring concrete, then patiently spent a day dealing with the geometry of two holes in the wall. He bobbed and wove through a sea of competing trades who all worked like dogs to do their parts of the puzzle on time and on budget.And as of this morning, when I did my first test roast, I am happy to say that the roaster is home, and that Freeport Coffee Roasting is now ready to rumble for the holidays ahead.
A fond thank you to Mike and Dan and Mac and Jerry and Hannah and Steve and Jim and everyone else who helped to make this work so well so quickly. And especially to Tanji who thankfully loves coffee.
