Back on Track

We procured a crane! Chris (of Schofield design) came through! He found a mechanic to fix his truck on Friday and was set to come Saturday morning. Since he had a smaller boom truck that couldn’t reach the whole building from one spot, Sam and I had some planning to do. We measured distances, checked load charts, and decided where he would park. It seemed he would have to reposition his truck a minimum of three times. We spent the remainder of the day assembling the roof peaks and staging them around the building.

In order to minimize the hours spent on the crane, we decided to put the two end peaks up ourselves since we could reach them. We arrived at 7am Saturday morning to set the first peak.

Chris arrived just after we finished! Woohoo!

Chris liked our plan and got to work immediately. He parked on the West side of the building to lift frames 2 and 3.

With Sam in the bucket truck and John in the scissor lift, we were able to set about two peaks per hour! (That’s very fast.) They could each align and bolt their side, and then one of them could go up to the peak to tighten the remaining bolts.

Everything was going as planned. Chris moved to the East side for frames 4-7.

BJ and I stayed on the ground to help with rigging. BJ handled the taglines, which are used to control the load from swinging around. He also used the lines to help with final alignment. I mostly observed and took a lot of pictures.

I had to put the camera down to deliver some steel ridge beams up to the boys, which connect from peak to peak. Sam and John weren’t a big fan of these. John took them up in the scissor lift and passed one end to Sam. The beams were a bit cumbersome.

Chris was a great crane operator. He was also interesting to talk to. I learned about some of his art and construction projects throughout the day.

We set the 7th peak just before lunch time.

And just like that, Chris was gone, and we had something that resembled a building!

We couldn’t put the last peak on until we got our bridge crane inside. We drove the crane up to building to align it on the ground. We set it on some Jenga towers and called it a night.

The next day, we put the crane up. I was nervous picking up the heaviest load yet and lifting it up over my head.

Sam guided me in as BJ handled the taglines and it went right in. The crane sat on the rails with almost no adjustment. Thank goodness! I guess measuring it a hundred times when we designed the building paid off.