Imgur user captaintarctica found plans of his 1960's house. The plans indicated that there should be a "Blast Shelter" somewhere there. So, after some digging he found it.
The original plans submitted to the city in 1961 for the original construction of the "blast shelter"
"I hired a metal detectorist to scan the yard. He found 2 likely spots marked with the X"
"About an hour of digging and hit this metal at about 2 feet below grade. I then worked my way around the large circle of metal..."
"Here is the first look inside the exhumed shelter... Saw a rusty spiral staircase with lots of dirt"
"I tied the lid back to my carport. But, still did not feel safe to go in yet since I was home alone and was sure that there was no cellular service down there to call for help. Would wait till the next day so I could get some air monitors from a friend of mine."
"The stairs and the counter weight for the lid"
"Here is an AS-BUILT drawing I made with the dimensions that we took during the first entry."
"the inner volute is the only thing left from the electric air fan that would have been installed. Above that would have been a hand crank vent fan"
"Here is the stairway after cleanup. The steps were impressively still very stable even with he amount of rust and rubble damage."
"Hired a couple friends in the concrete business to help me get the entry rebuilt"
"Also dug another 6-8 inches around the existing concrete to be able to cap the old entry"
"The rebar is epoxied into place"
"A SonoTube cardboard form is put in for the inner form. IT was quite shoehorned in there"
"Installed a 4" conduit for electric or what ever..."
"It was going to be very hot for the concrete pour so I put up a tent to shade the work area. it worked quite well."
"So much rust and dirt. Had to break out the propane torch, grinder and large hammers get the steps broken free."
"I was sanding and prepping the fiberglass for some paint and a large chunk of it came apart. I assessed the rest of the fiberglass liner and found that none of it was attached to the concrete. Since its not contributing to anything structural, I decided to remove it."
"Since the fiberglass actually went into the wall It was a bit hard to get a clean edge."
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