Just some work pics

[Nige]

Those photos make me feel cold just looking at them........
Currently 84, mostly sunny with scattered heavy rain showers & about 110% humidity.

 

[hvy 1ton]

Thanks a lot for bringing this up. This has been the last 3 hours here.

That's the way the models have been tracking all week. I didn't want to ruin yesterday for you too.

If it makes you feel better, I didn't even get flurries up here and I like snow.

 

[kshansen]

Those photos make me feel cold just looking at them........
Currently 84, mostly sunny with scattered heavy rain showers & about 110% humidity.

I prefer the 70ºF's but for this time of year I would rather have it in the 20ºF's than this 30-40ºF BS!
Too cold to do anything outside and too warm to freeze the ground so all you have is mud!

At least if it gets cold enough to freeze the mud you can cut some fire wood and not have a mess when you bring it in the house a year or two from now to burn it. Like they say when you cut and split firewood in the winter you get heat out of it twice!

 

[crane operator]

Well the ground was warm, but our temps have been cool, so this snow has hung around a while.

A jeep managed to get stuck in a flat spot, and someone went through the ditch at the shop corner. Lucky for them, someone already took out the new corner sign a week ago, so they only ran over the already knocked over sign.

 

[crane operator]

They want to raise the block walls of this building. With osb prices through the roof, and new trusses with a long lead time, we're going to try to save the trusses and roof. Someone has a pair of oil leaks to take care of also.

 

[crane operator]

I was way off on weight of the roof section also, and I still can't figure out why its as heavy as it is. They had not gotten it separated very well from the walls, and that didn't help any, but its on the ground now.

They've decided now that they are doing all the bays of the building, originally they were only raising one bay. We're going to take a little more crane to get the rest off, I had to boom up a little to get the first section off with the 70 ton. I had some margin built in when we went up there, but I used it all up.

 

[crane operator]

Compressor for a big chiller unit. When we brought the old one down, we tried to transfer the two picking eyes to the new compressor. One eye simply snapped off when trying to remove it. They had a little gantry up on the roof taking the compressor out, and I know they had a short chain just going flat from eye to eye. I'm sure that cracked/ bent the eye. distorting the threads, then it snapped off rather than unthreading. I'm just glad it didn't let loose on the way down from the roof.

M16 thread eye, customer's picking eye, and you can guess where it was made.

 

[crane operator]

 

[crane operator]

Went and did the job down by the lake. 1st gear with power divider in. Slow and easy.

 

[crane operator]

I knew the hot shot driver wouldn't have a chance of driving back out of the pump station, but " I've got 4 wheel drive" etc. etc.

Hate to tell you this bud- but the weight is now all on the trailer axles after I pulled the building off, with no weight on the drives, you ain't making that hill. Whatever.

Fortunately, he spun out before the curve, he would have never got it backed back down around the curve, without jacknifing.

Extra 4x4 ford up front and they got up, but there was a lot of spinning. It was nice of them to tear the road up before I had to get out.

 

[crane operator]

I've broke axles and it ain't no fun, I hook up some help before I need it. That way if you roll a rock, the help keeps you moving in the right direction, instead of digging holes and spinning out.

 

[Natman]

I picked a garage roof, complete, several years ago, so they could put the new already framed walls and floor underneath it, brace them, and then have me set it back down, making a second story out of it. It went perfect, what was great about the job was it was for my county's recently retired building inspector, who had earlier retired from 30 years of being an iron worker. In other words, EVEN THOUGH he was an inspector....he knew what he was doing, and I took it as a high compliment he choose me to do the hoisting. He had beams already in place up in the trusses, so my tele spreader bar and 4 pick points was all we needed, and it floated up just perfect.

 

[crane operator]

Volunteer day at a church. Volunteers to set clear span 70' trusses is always a adventure. The head guy is a contractor, so he and his son knew what was going on, but if the lone mexican framer hadn't shown up at about 9:30, it would have been a long, long, long two days.

Typical volunteers, everyone wants to stand on the ground and direct, no one wanted up in the roof. The old guy cutting blocks evidently forgot his glasses, because next thing I see- is someone with a tape measure sorting blocks by length, within a inch was the acceptable range. I think at one time they had a "long" and "short" pile. They will have to do some adjusting to get sheeting on.

Started connecting trusses, with cordless drills and screws. They had air compressor and hoses all laid out, and I'm like "Hey, where's the nail guns to put on these hoses?" Contractor thought it would be easier/safer for the volunteers to handle screw guns. The poor framer up in the roof that was doing all the work, just didn't have enough hands to line block up, pull truss over, start screw and run it in. Nail gun = line up and bam bam. I ain't got time for screw guns.

Truss providers must be struggling to get long lumber, bottom chords were 12' long boards, which makes for a snaky truss. Wind came up about noon, and we had to go to two tag ropes, head guy was " that takes too long". Two tag ropes was the least of our speed troubles.

But they all got put up in a day and nobody got hurt.

 

[crane operator]

25 ton sprung a radiator leak, and yes, I tried to smear some "water weld" JB weld on there to get me to a job if I needed to, because the camelback was still in pieces. And no, the "water weld" didn't work. I am that guy that will try to bubble gum something together in a pinch. I shouldn't even be allowed near nice stuff.


Leak is right at the fold of the top tank, radiator is going to come out next week, maybe........... if I don't really really need it, in which case it will just go to a job and drip antifreeze.

 

[crane operator]

But I may not need the 25, Camelback is back together. I did a little custom torque multiplier work, with my lug nut remover super tool. Its like a 50:1 and it worked pretty slick. Slugger wrench on the next nut over for a stop and spin spin spin by hand. You can tell when it starts wrapping up with the torque. I felt a little close to it all if things went bad, but it all worked.

Hytoc is going to have to wait for a different job.

I think we'll take the mack for a little run, and then better put it back up on jacks and recheck everything.

 

[crane operator]

They're moving out of a jobsite in town. The tow truck boys had a whole car trailer full of tires for the job trailer. They were planning on a few tires not making it.

Someone whacked one of the old light poles in the parking lot pretty hard, and the chandelier that they saved, between the wind and some vandals there isn't much left.

 

[crane operator]

Roofing materials with the 70 ton, and legal eagle with the new counterweight rig.

Removing creek boxes with the 100 ton. We put this crossing in a year or so ago, and it keeps flooding and cutting out the road. It replaced a ancient pour in place that was 1/2 of its size. But the county decided its going to have to put in a bridge instead of the boxes. They will store the boxes and use them in a different location.

 

[crane operator]

 

[crane operator]

Had to move one of the vaults we set a few weeks ago. They had moved a feeder line to the riser box, and that made the precast holes not line up. Unfortunately, they didn't have room to get the concrete core drill between the boxes, so we picked up the one box to get some room to work. It got a little stormy, and we even got a rainbow.

There's evidently a rush on, we had gotten winded out of two jobs, and I was standing at the shop when I got the "how soon can you be here?" call. My "about a hour" reply I think made the customers day. And probably his Christmas weekend.

 

[Nige]

Has that new engine paid for itself yet..?