Slow week in the office

Here's a photo from where I stopped for lunch one day, 4 hours away from home. And just for fun, another from a tight little panel job for a beachfront holiday home .

Some mancage work today on a 220kV transmission line. The lines closest to the crane are dead, but the far side is still live . The guys who climb these towers have some serious balls, its a nope from me.

Kiwi-truckwit said:

The guys who climb these towers have some serious balls, its a nope from me.

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I don't know how much money the power company has but they don't have enough to pay me to do that either.

CM1995 said:

I don't know how much money the power company has but they don't have enough to pay me to do that either.

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It's state owned and taxpayer funded, so all then money in the world!
I'm okay with heights, but climbing onto a 1 inch aluminium cable 100 getf in the air is another matter entirely. Give me the mancage work every time (or better yet, pulling the levers in a warm, dry cab)
Also, an error on my part. These lines aren't 220kV, but a mere 110kV

I'd take the cab every time...........Unless it was
attached to a Tower Crane! (No HV towers either)

Kiwi tell me about the concrete panel home.

Pre-cast on site or off site and trucked in?
There appears to be anchor bolts so is there structural steel involved as well?
What's the floor, pre-cast concrete or metal deck pan and cast in place?

Sorry for all the questions, that's an interesting concept for a house.

CM1995 said:

Kiwi tell me about the concrete panel home.

Pre-cast on site or off site and trucked in?
There appears to be anchor bolts so is there structural steel involved as well?
What's the floor, pre-cast concrete or metal deck pan and cast in place?

Sorry for all the questions, that's an interesting concept for a house.

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The precast was all made offsite. Casting on site is the exception here, rather than the norm. There's many precast businesses with heated beds that allow the panel to be pulled the day after pouring. Undercover so they can be cast in all weathers. Purpose-built panel trailers that allow them to be carted upright, or at least on edge for the tall ones. We can then pick them up with 2 hooks and rotate in midair. Placing panels is probably our biggest market.
As to the rest of your questions, I can't answer specifics for that house as i just don't know, but almost certainly there will be structural steel in it. From memory I believe the midfloor was going to be a conventional timber joist floor. If it was going to be a concrete system, there would be reo steel starters cast into the top of the panel.
Generally for a concrete midfloor of that size, unispan would be specced. Which is a pre-stressed flat slab, around 2-3in thick, in transportable sections (around 8' wide to fit on a trailer,) to make up the floor. Once placed, a reinforced slab is poured on top to compete the floor.

Thank you for the info. Here in the 'States we build disposable housing constructed of wood for the most part, just ask Digger.

We have the pre-stressed pre-cast flat slab panels that are used a lot in apartments, schools and hotels. CMU walls with the panels for flooring.

Interesting work - keep up the pics and commentary.

CM1995 said:

Thank you for the info. Here in the 'States we build disposable housing constructed of wood for the most part, just ask Digger.

We have the pre-stressed pre-cast flat slab panels that are used a lot in apartments, schools and hotels. CMU walls with the panels for flooring.

Interesting work - keep up the pics and commentary.

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Most of our homes are timber framed. With Forestry being one of our main industries, timber is plentyful. However, every now and then someone with too much money decides to do something different.
Commercial buildings, however, almost always incorporate concrete panels, at least along the boundary walls

Today's mission: lay down a stainless steel silo and load it onto a truck.
The trailer is purpose built for carrying silos and can trombone out to carry the longer (taller?) ones. It also widens to accept large diameters, this one was 12ft.
Usually they're built with lifting ears above, which can be fitted with a shackle. This one had little stubs, which we struggled to get our rigging around. In the end, a ring from my chains fit perfectly, but a small wire sling would have been nice. A colleague of mine tailed out the bottom with a large loader crane, and it was safely on its way halfway down the island to its new home.

Been a busy couple of weeks. Close to base is a new build of a old folks home. We've been in and out of there most weeks. I've been lifting in reinforcing steel and bundles of floor decking, while some of the larger cranes in the company have been placing the precast concrete panels. Part of it now has the top floor frames standing, so the trusses could be lifted for this section. while another section is still preparing for first floor concrete
Once completed, the buildings you can see on the other side will be demolished, and another stage of construction will begin.

The company I work for has depots in 3 locations. I'm based in the central depot, and will sometimes be required to head to one of the others if they have no available cranes. This week I headed north in the afternoon, for an early start the next day. Halfway there, a truck sat on its side, blocking the main highway. It must have happened only minutes earlier, as there were no emergency services yet on scene. Since the crane was already there, I was enlisted to assist with the recovery.
The hoist on the trailer had been fully extended in the crash, so we first grabbed hold of the axle group on the trailer and straightened it out while a wrecker pulled on the top of the bin to get the ram retracted again. The crane was then moved to the front of the truck, and rigged to the upright axles. 2 wreckers pulled the whole unit over to its tipping point, at which point the crane took over and let it gently back onto its wheels.
By this time, the road had been closed for around 6 hours, and traffic, although it had been diverted around a small country road, was absolute mayhem. Thankfully, the driver walked away, and there were no other vehicles involved. An amazing outcome, considering the truck crossed into the opposite lane of what is normally very busy piece of road.

The job for the next couple of days is pretty simple. Lay out the roof purlins for a new build. The site isn't the greatest for setup though, I've had to pull out every block that I carry, plus scrounge on site for some fence posts. And since I'm sitting on a right of way for the neighbouring buildings, I've left half outriggers on the off side.

Good job Kiwi on uprighting the dump truck.

Unfortunately with our ambulance chasing lawyers and our commercial insurance policies full of exclusions due to lawsuits, I can't help out like that anymore. Billboards line the highway with a slime ball in a suit and a 1-800 number to call if you've been hurt in an accident. It's a damn shame.

Thanks for posting job site pics, I really enjoy seeing how others do it around the globe.

CM1995 said:

Good job Kiwi on uprighting the dump truck.

Unfortunately with our ambulance chasing lawyers and our commercial insurance policies full of exclusions due to lawsuits, I can't help out like that anymore. Billboards line the highway with a slime ball in a suit and a 1-800 number to call if you've been hurt in an accident. It's a damn shame.

Thanks for posting job site pics, I really enjoy seeing how others do it around the globe.

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I was a little frustrated with the emergency services to be honest. Where it happened is a main arterial route, with extra lanes currently under construction. There was already traffic management there for the construction, they acted quickly to set up a stop/go so the traffic could keep moving. Once the fire brigade showed up, they blocked the highway completely. The police showed up, spent an hour investigating, then since it involved a truck, we needed to wait another hour on CVIU to turn up (the commercial vehicle unit of the police, affectionately known to truckers as the god-squad, or less affectionately as mermaids) to do their own investigation. This led to the road being closed for 6 hours. Luckily, the roading guys were there to help out and provided an excavator and tractor mounted sweeper to clean up the debris that came out of the bin, otherwise that would have been another delay. Don't get me wrong, I understand these guys have a process to follow and I'm not about to blast then for doing their job, but I do think there's sinc streamlining that could be done when it's a minor injury accident and a state highway is blocked.

Cream job for a Friday today. A couple of masts to place on their boats today, with a couple of hours downtime in between to watch the tide coming in.

Looks like nice cool weather. We could use some of that here right now. Its been hot hot hot. I'm ready for some winter.

Also 6hours to reopen a road doesn't happen here. Maybe if theres multiple fatalities, and a snow/ice event so they can't get it cleared. But certainly not for a no injuries truck roll over. They'd have one or two big wreckers out there and get it drug off the road one way or another.

crane operator said:

Looks like nice cool weather. We could use some of that here right now. Its been hot hot hot. I'm ready for some winter.

Also 6hours to reopen a road doesn't happen here. Maybe if theres multiple fatalities, and a snow/ice event so they can't get it cleared. But certainly not for a no injuries truck roll over. They'd have one or two big wreckers out there and get it drug off the road one way or another.

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Middle of winter here. The cool is nice, but I'm pretty sick of mud.

It's middle of the summer here, hot as hell and wet. It's been raining all week. We got an inch of rain dumped yesterday afternoon at the yard.

The last tally I heard on the radio was 11.5" of rain so far here in July. Our job sites are a mess.

CM1995 said:

It's middle of the summer here, hot as hell and wet. It's been raining all week. We got an inch of rain dumped yesterday afternoon at the yard.

The last tally I heard on the radio was 11.5" of rain so far here in July. Our job sites are a mess.

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I don't envy you guys at this time of year trying to move dirt. There is a significant amount of roading happening around the country at the moment, and the sediment controls are works of art in some areas.
We've been having some heavy rain events here too. Last weekend, many roads were closed due to flooding, the waters are still to subside in some places. It's a rare occurrence, but seemingly becoming more common in the last couple of years. Last year, a town was destroyed by flooding.