Just a few pictures from crane job this spring And my son backfilling a new house it's going to have a heated concrete floor More to come
Some of our own jobs and a really tired dog
Hard to be sure but is that obviously abused dog a Greyhound?
No the poor thing is a german short haired pointer. I think this picture was taken last fall after a good days hunt
The picture on top of the stacker was a couple weeks ago, the ready mix plant i use had a stacker motor go out so in the morning i went and pulled the old motor and put the new one in, No problem. I just nicely got back driving nails when the phone rings and it them again, the mechanics had to reposition the motor and the electrition said, we are done can we test it and then we can go, well they turned it on and the torsion flipped it off the mounts and it fell right down into the bottom of the sand hopper ( not happy )
I went on a client call this morning and saw this. I wonder how that truck on top of that silo? some-one with too much time on there hands.
My son played counter weight today he is running the excavator .
Counter weight is important . Looks like it went well . Septic tanks ?
Not much action on the crane page so I'll do my part. This is a house I set today first truss was at 80 ft. I worked blind until 16 ft. From the front. I had a small mishap when I was setting up, the A2B wieght got caught on the tail at the becket and before I noticed I had a mess on my winch. Now I likely have to cut about 40 ft. Line off. Does any deviation from straight have to be cut out or only if it's kinked ?
That's a bummer , sounds like you had a "bird nest " on the drum . If only a slight bend in the cable & no broken wire I would reeve out & clamp it in a vice the straiten the section . Good looking home Tradesman ! Concrete crew sure did a nice job on the brick ledge .:thumbsup We are currently tearing down some old homes . Running a crane or boom truck keep it smooth & soft when setting something . Running excavator on a tear down job stuffing 40 yard containers with trash get funky & crunchy Total contrast but I love it .
A good annual inspector will write you up for any deformity in the cable. Rotation resistant cable is especially susceptible to deformity when getting wrapped wrong. If it is just a small wave in the line, I would visually inspect the line, and make a written record. If you've got a full drum of cable on the winch, and just don't like how it looks, cut it off. You won't miss 40'. The best way to see exactly how bad the cable wave is, scope out 70' of boom, up at 65 deg. Let your cable out until the ball is almost touching the ground. Telescope in, slacking the cable by setting the ball just on the ground. Here's where you'll see the wave the worst. Then to retighten the cable on the drum, just scope out another 20' of boom, and let out cable to get rid of the slack. I messed up, and cut off about 30' of cable this spring, I was swinging the counterweight through trees, and a oak branch held up the winch line, popped it over to the side and I pinched it up on the side of the drum. In a perfect world, things like that wouldn't happen.
Things like that don't happen in the world of flat set-up spots, good riggers, competent tag-line operators and close easy picks. Always think I need to find that world but it might be a boring place. Lol Generally if I'm sitting in the cab and I can see the deforminity from my seat, it's gonna be cut out. If it's not visible unless your looking at it very closely and there's no crushed or broken wires I won't worry about it.
Spent some time setting up and tearing down for this job today, I was setting some docks at the lake today. I layed out 40' of 3/4" plywood and 16' of plastic mats, then we used a mat on each side with 6 6x6 timbers and a 36" square pad. I set one of the docks out 70' and it felt as solid as a gravel parking lot.
I take it the plywood was to eliminate tracks in the yards? I've never had much luck if its soft with a single layer of plywood. I've always laid a double layer, otherwise I disappear where the joints are. The cribbing under the jacks looks great. I always push the guys to use enough cribbing (width wise). The last thing you need in the middle of a pick, is to have a jack start sinking away. I was actually curious about your plastic mats. I have a tree outfit I work with, that has it for their loaders and bucket trucks. I just was never sure if they would hold up under crane use, or make much difference. They really like theirs, but a 20,000lb bucket truck is a far cry from a 50,000 or 95,000lb crane. If I remember right they were kind of high priced, and I don't have a nice deck like that boom truck to haul them on
Might look silly but guys like the owner think nothing of giving me $200 for mat rental and $120 an hour while I set up and tear down, but if I mark up their lawn I'm the one paying to re-sod it for them. When the matts came up our foot prints left bigger marks than the crane
Crane op I only have 4 plastic matts they're too expensive for me to have more but they work really well. I usually don't travel with them or else I have a hard time getting paid for their use, but when they are needed I charge $100 for them. In really wet conditions you still mark up the ground but they will carry me across a fresh wet hydro trench no problem, I love them
I set theses barn timbers for a new house yesterday the bent in the second picture was two ton. This old barn frame does not support anything it's just a decoration that stands independently of the frame of the house. Really cool!
So is that metric tons? or do you still use imperial? I didn't know if the crane was set up with metric, or if that's what you guys use in your construction either. Do you use meters and centimeters framing?
It was 4000 lbs. I can work in either, our residential work we do in imperial. But commercial work of any size is in metric I order concrete in cubic meters, really I do everything in metric except build a house. It's common around my area to write metric tonn imperial ton, I'm not sure if that's a local farmer thing or if it's more common. My lmi is in imperial. Working in metric is really quite easy no dividing fractions.
Its "metric tonne" not to be confused with a long ton
Your correct I forgot the e I wasn't even thinking if a long ton I havnt heard that term for years. Thanks
The cranes I hire in here in the UK all use the plastic mats, mostly not as thick as yours. I think wood is frowned upon as it doesn't have safe operating weights marked on it and there have been a few cranes go over when the wood gave way. Most operators prefer the round plastic mats as they can roll them rather than carrying or dragging as they are so heavy. Graham
I set a hot tub on this deck at the lake today, I think it was 78 ft. It was fairly technical I had to pick it off the ground beside my truck cab swing it over the house to my right, set it down in front of me the scope out to 100 ft. Of stick ( there was to much tree cover beside me to use 100 ft. ) boom down over the roof to my left then when I cleared the tree swing right and boom down to 78 ft. Radius. The I picked up the old tub that is at the front corner of the deck and put it on the ground beside my cab, I couldn't load it on the trailer because I had power lines in front of me. Love it !
How's your hoist view camera working so far? Worth the money?
Worth the money, could have been easily if I had of had it on when I made a birds nest out of my hoist line when my A2B caught on my becket wedge, I would have seen that I had a mess and needed to stop where I was before I kinked my line. Luckily it didn't accually kink and seems to have pretty well straightened out. I will likely replace it when things slow down. Other than that I have used it a couple times when I was working blind and it's nice for inching the line on something delicate. My winch up is really hard to feather
We didn't have to use a crane but it was quite a performance to get it up there. We set up three sections of scaffolding and platforms. The ratchet strap was replaced with a 1/4" X1 1/4 pc of black wrought iron it turned out pretty nice, this is a house at the lake we built several years ago
Glad to hear the camera is working out . You guy's sure build some nice looking homes ! :thumbsup First question my boy would ask is " why is the canoe on the ceiling " ? And, " can we get it down & take it out on the lake " ? Normal question for a 6 year old .
The owners are both surgeons and have a little too much money and I'm always glad to help them with their problem. Super nice people and great clients. The house is on a lake and has a woodsy decor, the canoe looks great , but I was instructed to not ruin it for water travel even though it will not likely ever be in the water. It is truly a work of art and deserves to be on display.
I turned down a couple crane jobs this week here's what I put my time in at 60 x150, four of us put it on in just over two days, fighting snow ,wind, even had I bit of ice, but it's on and I'm not driving another nail till 2017. Now if someone needs a crane I'll be there in a flash
Nice looking setup on the dock job.Your right why hurry and be haywire when you charge by the hour.The jib on that conventional in the farmers yard looks unusual,are there no backstays or don't they show in the picture?never seen a cantilever jib on a conventional. Merry Christmas
Not sure about the jib I know who the owners are by reputation, they do dock work, drag lining, and drive piles, but I've never been around them working. The crane in the picture is in thier yard all the time I quess for loading and unloading boom sections and thier pile rig