blog post stuff inside

[skyking]

You've been warned. Feel free to post up shizzle you did at work, but don't comb the intarwebs to post up random shizzles.
I set the lobby glass on this hospital construction project in 2019:
Just getting started. Note the big crates of glass units inside the building in this shot. This was no bueno.

They had the curb section set on that concrete wall, and we had to drift those 3600 pound glass crates out from under the roof without screwing that up.
On the 6th panel, they had more fun than they planned for. There was an ironworker up there in harness, tied off to that cross cable. he would climb up on the panel and stomp it down into place. On the 6th one it did not go all the way down, and they asked me if I knew what it weighed? Yes, I had it at~900 or so on the LMI. Can you pull up that amount plus, say, 200? Yeah. They pried and cussed and had me dial it up quite a bit more, with me reminding them of the fishing pole analogy of a loaded crane boom. It had a protruding fastener and they did not make that mistake again.
Here we have drifted all the glass crates out and have burned a bunch of it up.

Up one more course.

 

[skyking]

I came back and set up again to put up structural steel for a skylight that connected that roof to the building behind. Almost all of that was in the blind.

The first piece of steel I could see. I had the boom about a foot off that old existing building, and the 40' long piece of red box tube is barely visible through the gap.

 

[skyking]

My old boss just sent me this picture of that finished building, after they demolished the old ones. That piece of steel is still visible and waiting for the connecting building and skylights.

 

[lxskllr]

Looks like PITA job. Looks good though.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Cool stuff. I imagine it's a bit nerve wracking working with glass panes.

Wish I could post stuff from work, but I think the NDA is kind of implied even though I never specifically signed one. Doubt I'd be allowed to.

 

[skyking]

I took this series to explain the really poor visibility from the seat of the dozer. That's my car out in front of the D8T I was operating.

This is what I could see from the seat, leaning over and looking for the car.

Just stay the fuck out of my way please. I cannot see you out there. IF you need to cross my path, do it behind me where I have great visibility.

 

[skyking]

removing the foot-thick concrete from the Stevens Canyon entrance building at Mt. Rainier National Park.

 

[Charmonium]

I took this series to explain the really poor visibility from the seat of the dozer. That's my car out in front of the D8T I was operating.
.
.
Just stay the fuck out of my way please. I cannot see you out there. IF you need to cross my path, do it behind me where I have great visibility.

WTF, it's a bug. Squish it.

 

[Charmonium]

I'm not really into thread cheerleading but I know some of you mfs do some similarly interesting shit at work or even around the house.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I wish I could post my work stuff but I think the NDA is implied, even though I never technically signed one.

Lots of interesting telecom equipment that you would not see even in a server room. Though where I work can be sorta considered a data centre in a way, just for telecommunications instead. We monitor equipment for roughly 1,000 or so of those buildings. We refer to them as central offices. Some are a small hut in middle of nowhere while some are multi storey buildings.

 

[skyking]

The National Park job was probably the best two summers.
I parked my car here at Reflection Lake for one summer.

We cut down this road ~25' deep for 600 feet, what you see in the foreground, and built it back up using fabric and making benches with crushed rock. It was unstable and sliding off the mountainside above Narada Falls, we went down, keyed it in, and built it back up.
To start the job they documented every stone in the historic guardrail wall, took it apart, and stored it on pallets in a Paradise Valley turnout. After we got the road brought up they put the wall back together just as it was.
Our boss was not a dirt guy, he was a paver. He ignored us when we strongly suggested we armor those fabric rolls as we brought it up. Oh no, he was in a hurry. Now we have a bunch of slope armoring to do that a regular excavator cannot reach anymore.
Now my task was to walk along inches from that precious wall, and reach down the slope with a 60' long reach machine.
No thumb to grab the 2'+ rock, and not much capacity or visibility. I had to swing straight to let traffic by as now the road is open.

The laborers had protected the trees with lumber. This is the perspective.

I would rummage around in the dump truck till I thought I had a rock, then stand up to see, and track forward or back to get down there and place a rock. You can't hammer them in with that skinny fishing pole of a boom and stick, so many times I would lose one and it would crash down the slope out of sight. They had rangers on the trails below to enforce the closures!

First round I set 130 tons of rock. A big storm dislodged some of it, so we placed another 100 tons.
All of this would have been comparatively trivial if we had stopped about halfway up on the rebuild and used one of the really big excavators to key it into the slope below with tender mercies

 

[Charmonium]

@skyking That looked a lot like English except for the shorthand and argot that comes with most specialities. And the more technical, usually means learning a new language. It's also a lot of fun when you have to use common english words that have no relation to their normal meaning.

If you stop for a minute though and think though, I think you can sus out most of them.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Fun fact: Excavators that big also double as carnival rides. Just maske sure OSHA is not there that day.

 

[skyking]

Fun fact: Excavators that big also double as carnival rides. Just maske sure OSHA is not there that day.

Only for idiots, oh wait, look what we have here.

 

[sandorski]

Those bastards! [has no idea what you said]

I'd post pics of my Work, but your Mom is camera shy.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Only for idiots, oh wait, look what we have here.

You do realize it was a joke right?

Referring to crazy stuff like this:

Hope they at least disabled the thumb though... would not want to activate that by accident.

 

[Charmonium]

@skyking So did the riders turn out to be witches? How's that work again. If you float you're a witch but if you drown, you're not. I might have that backwards.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Since I can't post stuff from work figured I'd post a little job I did at home. Nothing serious, just a small solar project to act as a source of free power, and also emergency power.

Solar setup in shed, wired to 40 amp panel from 3000w inverter. 400w of solar and about 5kwh of battery. I eventually ran a 40 amp feed to the house as well.

Didn't bother going below frost line and this is the first winter since the install so once the snow melts I will go check to see if there's been any significant movement. I think it will be fine though, shed itself is not on a solid foundation either so everything will have just moved in unison. The cable is rated for direct burial so only used conduit above surface to protect from lawnmower/weed whacker as well as UV light.

I plan to run some outlets throughout the house, have not gotten around to that yet. Going to add some automation so some key circuits can auto transfer to solar based on battery capacity and/or if power goes out. The solar setup kinda acts as a UPS in a way since I have a battery reserve just sitting there ready to be used, even if there is no sun. Still need to work on the automation stuff to make that work. For now I can just manually run an extension cord to the loads I need. Power rarely goes out here so it has not been a priority. There was one day where I was working from home and ran my PC and monitors off solar while my network/server stuff stayed on UPS. Saved me from having to go in the office.

Either way always good to be prepared.

 

[IronWing]

removing the foot-thick concrete from the Stevens Canyon entrance building at Mt. Rainier National Park.

That is sooo Park Service to have you dance around a piece of crap building because it’s been there awhile. It was cheap crap when it was built and cheap crap now.

 

[deadlyapp]

I don't have a lot of pictures saved on this computer easily accessible, but here's a few. First one is of a pipeline station pumping about 12,000 gallons per minute of natural gas liquids, boosted up around 1400 psi. Second is setting a 22,000lb motor at a new jobsite that is going to pump about 10,000 gallons per minute of crude oil.

 

[IronWing]

The National Park job was probably the best two summers.
I parked my car here at Reflection Lake for one summer.

We cut down this road ~25' deep for 600 feet, what you see in the foreground, and built it back up using fabric and making benches with crushed rock. It was unstable and sliding off the mountainside above Narada Falls, we went down, keyed it in, and built it back up.
To start the job they documented every stone in the historic guardrail wall, took it apart, and stored it on pallets in a Paradise Valley turnout. After we got the road brought up they put the wall back together just as it was.
Our boss was not a dirt guy, he was a paver. He ignored us when we strongly suggested we armor those fabric rolls as we brought it up. Oh no, he was in a hurry. Now we have a bunch of slope armoring to do that a regular excavator cannot reach anymore.
Now my task was to walk along inches from that precious wall, and reach down the slope with a 60' long reach machine.
No thumb to grab the 2'+ rock, and not much capacity or visibility. I had to swing straight to let traffic by as now the road is open.

The laborers had protected the trees with lumber. This is the perspective.

I would rummage around in the dump truck till I thought I had a rock, then stand up to see, and track forward or back to get down there and place a rock. You can't hammer them in with that skinny fishing pole of a boom and stick, so many times I would lose one and it would crash down the slope out of sight. They had rangers on the trails below to enforce the closures!

First round I set 130 tons of rock. A big storm dislodged some of it, so we placed another 100 tons.
All of this would have been comparatively trivial if we had stopped about halfway up on the rebuild and used one of the really big excavators to key it into the slope below with tender mercies

Cool project! When the Catalina Highway north of Tucson was being rebuilt there was a significant slope stabilization component with highwall scaling. There was an excavator working above the highway, knocking boulders down the hill. The flag man waved us through and we were all, “Mmm Nope”, as we watched a boulder crash across the highway. The flag man spent some quality time on the radio and then announced that there would be a forty five minute delay. We were good with that and watched the boulders roll.

 

[Charmonium]

Solar setup in shed, wired to 40 amp panel from 3000w inverter.

Just out of curiosity, and if you don't mind talking money - So your panels can put out up to 3kw? That's impressive.

It looks like you made your own storage system - congrats. I'd love to be able to do electrical stuff on the house.

So how much were the panels and do you know how efficient they are?

 

[Red Squirrel]

Just out of curiosity, and if you don't mind talking money - So your panels can put out up to 3kw? That's impressive.

It looks like you made your own storage system - congrats. I'd love to be able to do electrical stuff on the house.

So how much were the panels and do you know how efficient they are?

Nah only 400w of solar as I don't really have any physical room for more panels unless I use house roof, but it's very hard to get to it for snow removal even with long broom so not worth the effort. No room for ground mount system either, and all the house walls get shadows most of the day.

So I do have to watch how long I run big loads for. In a grid down situation I can see myself using it to maybe boil a pot of water, or run the microwave and then after that it would be mostly small loads if any, so it would eventually charge back up.

As for price I kinda lost track since it started off as a small system and I added on. Going from memory, panels were around $600 total or so, I kinda overpaid but it's harder to find this stuff here in Canada and at the time especially it was hard. Now there seems to be a few more places to buy that stuff from. Batteries were around $900 total or so from Canadian Tire. Inverter was around $500ish. Charge controller around $200ish. Then I'd say another $600 for the two electrical panels, breakers, accessories and the wiring. The 40a cable alone was a good $200. Copper is crazy expensive now days.

 

[skyking]

Red that's really cool solar stuff you posted up but the redneck rodeo s*** don't post it in this thread this is for professionals.
I know this isn't what you do because you can't just deactivate the thumb.
You can unhook the hose but nobody's going to do that not when they're that stupid to begin with. I've gotten people fired for doing less stupid s*** than that.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Red that's really cool solar stuff you posted up but the redneck rodeo s*** don't post it in this thread this is for professionals.

You sound miserable, maybe you need a coffee.