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Modelling a pumping station

The building (now demolished) seen in the following links was an old pumping station at Barry Docks in South Wales, site of the famous Woodham's scrapyard :

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want to estimate the size of building, which I have done using the time-honoured method of counting brick courses. Assuming a brick course to be three inches, I come out with an unfeasibly small height for the building (from ground level to ridge line) of about twenty feet. In view of the twelve foot tall locomotive near the building this figure is obviously wrong.

Possible explanations are: - it really is a tiny building - my arithmetic is no good - they have bigger than normal bricks in Wales - what look like brick courses are an illusion caused by the resolution of the JPEG image

Can anyone suggest a realistic estimate of the size of the building?

John

Reply to
John Rampling
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Very difficult to use the engine for estimates as its not really close enough. Much better idea is to use that chimney in the 2nd linked photo to get scale. Can easily see the number of bricks for the width. Simon

Of course it may have been built during the days of the brick tax during which time they did use bigger bricks.

Reply to
simon

John,

You could try contacting the people at the Ordinance Survey website

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If the building was still standing you could use the on-line map service, but as it's now demolished the only real way is to locate it on an old map and then work out the size via the scale of the map. If they can't help, and you are really keen on this project, then you will need to visit the local library in the area where the buildings stood as most library's have local maps dating back to the early 1800's or more

If you can't make the trip to South Wales then maybe someone in that area could pop along to the library for you

Malcolm

Reply to
Malcolm

Not demolished after all !

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Thanks Simon & Malcolm for your replies. I now know where to go for the information.

John

Reply to
John Rampling

[...]

Cool!

Will you post the actual dimensions, then? I'd like to know whose wild guesses, er, sorry, carefully calculated estimates, were close to the mark. :-)

Reply to
Wolf Kirchmeir

Ah, but I only suggested a method, am not responsible for how it used. In fact I did do the calculations myself, you may be suprised as to how accurate they are. Simon

Reply to
simon

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