HERMANN — In the basement below the historic Gasconade County courthouse in Hermann, a Franklin County Construction crew was jack-hammering after business hours Thursday evening.

Their progress over the past month was nearing full depth on about half of the 9-by-11-foot opening for an elevator shaft assembly which will reach 6-feet deep into bedrock atop the Hermann river-bluff site. Plans call for a finished dimension of 6-by-8 feet for the shaft.

Joseph Rethemeyer, who is pursuing a civil engineering career through Missouri S&T, was leading the crew which included a cousin, David Otten, of New Haven, and friend Clayton Mellendorf, from the Effingham, Ill., region, who was helping out on his break from college.

After removing the 3- to 4-inches of concrete floor, they were into bedrock. The first course of foundation blocks follows the contour of the bluff-top.

“It’s been rock the whole way,” said Rethemeyer as they put on hearing protection and respirators to protect themselves from the dust they would create as they began their shifts as the courthouse was closing for the day. 

The crew on Jan. 4 was cleaning off around the edges of the pit and drilling holes in the upper portion of the excavation site. A dry-mix epoxy material called “Dexpan” was being used to fill the drilled-out holes. Mixed into a wet solution similar to a concrete or mortar consistency, the material is poured into the drilled holes. As it dries overnight, said Rethemeyer, it expands, creating “big old cracks in the rock” which are then removed by hand.

That was scheduled for Friday and they expected to reach full depth and width requirements to accommodate the elevator shaft by Saturday. County Clerk Lesa Lietzow said the crew had reached the proper depth over the weekend and was working Monday night to clean up around the pit’s edges down to the finished depth.

Furniture and equipment in the county commission meeting room is covered nightly due to the dust.

Mellendorf handled the removal of the materials. Each 5-gallon plastic bucket of material was lifted out of the pit and removed from the room by wheelbarrow. Buckets of rock were hand-dumped into a conveyor belt which lifted the material up and out of the basement window on the building’s west side and into a skid-loader bucket. From there it was removed from the site in a dump truck.

The work zone will next extend up through the ceiling of the Emergency Operations Center and into east side of the front lobby in the 1896 building. A portion of a storage room behind the lobby wall will be included in the opening for the elevator which comes with a price tag of $475,600.

Franklin County Construction was the lone bidder although at least three other firms picked up bid packets. Engineers for the county believe other bidders shied away from submitting quotes due to the necessity of working after hours and weekends to complete the project. Franklin County Construction also had an alternate item for rock removal which added $22,000 to the price. An estimate from Archer-Elgin engineers contracted to the county was $487,699 without contingencies.