We did some cool stuff at work today

[pritch]

Today was the day I had been having nightmares about for the last 2 years. I'm a construction superintendent and I'm 24 months into a 26 month project, and today was windmill tower day. This is an elementary school in South Weber, Utah. We added 2 new buildings and extensive remodeling in the exsisting building. This is in a very windy place, so one of the features is these 2 windmills and today we had to set the poles.

At the last minute I had to run grab my camera, so I missed the first one, the smaller of the two, coming off the ground:



The plan calls for these to be set into a 10' deep by 4' square hole, with this rebar cage around it. This is where we hit the first snag. The crane couldn't lift the pole high enough to set it into the rebar by about a foot and a half. We ended up having to lean that 600 pound rebar cage over enough to stick the end of the pole into it and then stand the whole thing up:



Our plan was to tie the rebar to these lugs the erector welded to the pole so we could set both together into the hole. That part all worked pretty good:



We set these I beams across the hole and those lugs bore the weight (approx. 6600 pounds) of pole and rebar while we pumped the hole full of concrete:



Braced it up with some deadman blocks and tilt-up braces and went to lunch. After lunch we would do the big one.

[GOPAPA]

Good Job Sup.. It's always a better feeling in the gut when they are in the hole and braced off.. nice pictures too..

[pritch]

These poles are 20'' heavy wall pipe. That first one is 53' long, with 10' of that set down into the footing, so 43' tall. The next one is 60' long with 10' into the ground. After the rebar problem we ran into on the first one, and this pole 7' longer, we decided to put the rebar into the hole first, then the pole into that. That worked much better:



These things are all that forklift wants. Didn't help that the left front tire was quite low. I couldn't believe it held:



The crane was nowhere near it's weight limit, but it just barely had enough stick. The erectors had to weld some other lugs near the top so they're slings wouldn't slip off. On this one, they had to weld them down far enough to get the pole high enough, but the headache ball interfered some, making it a little harded to get things plumbed up, but all in all, this one went much easier than the first:



Weld on some bolts to hook the tilt brace to:



Anchor the bottom of the brace to these 4000 pound concrete deadmen blocks:

[pritch]

And fill the hole up with mud. We could get a mixer to this one, so we had sent the pump home after the first one. These holes took an even 10 yards of concrete each, with just enough rebar sticking out to get ahold of the beauty ring we'll put around them at finish grade. More of a mow strip, really.



These both will get some architectual steel elements welded to them, and then the generator. And that's the thing that drives me nuts-after all this, they are only putting a 1k generator on these. Not enough power to run anything. Oh, they will be hooked up to the grid, but all they are really designed to do is teach the kids about green energy, which is cool and all, but-dang!

They sure will look neat when they are done, though:

[VA72C10]

very cool. thanks for sharing....

[LEEVON]

Nice pics, would you mind coming down to MO and showing my Superintendent how to work a camera?

I'm also in construction, a project manager. I'm wrapping up a $5mil higher education project (LEED Gold) right now and starting another $5mil higher ed building (LEED Platinum) and a $14mil church. One of the projects has a 65kw turbine on site that we are tying into, thankfully it was already there.

You must be like me with the forklift tires, I never paid them much mind until I was standing near one and it blew. Sounded like a bomb and threw gravel 100', dang near wet my pants.

Maybe we should start a construction thread!