Im sure you have all noticed I have slowed down on the site. I have just been busy hard at work. I am one of the many fine people helping to build a new Sellwood bridge in Portland OR. Previous to my employment they had moved the old bridge over and are building the new one in its place, while people still can use the old one in the meantime. A sub team was pulling the old supports in these pics. I was told each section was about 90 tons, this is a 180 ton crane that's on a floating barge. You can see the massive counterweights (big black blocks on the base).
This was all happening while our team was setting up for a 2 day concrete pour for the new supports. The new one has what we call angel wings that will connect to either side of the new bridge work, but also has pillars coming up to meet the deck. The amount of concrete inside this form work can get very hot while its curing, so they had cooling tubes running through the structure. It came out making quite a nice fountain in my opinion (pic below). We had two pump trucks going nonstop with crews alternating shifts for the pour. Even with 2 concrete trucks in ready for each pump we still only raised the height of concrete an average of 1 foot an hour. A very serious amount of concrete went into this, and I spent all day yesterday prepping for the next one.
Here is just a fun pic of the foggy morning the other day.
Many years ago my father was in charge of the traffic in a large and windy harbour. He thought that the container cranes could operate at much higher wind speeds than 30mph and that if they did not, then they would not operate enough hours of the day to keep their costs competitive.
So he had the wind speed gauges on the cranes disconnected. And the cranes operated in much higher wind speeds without incident.
Still, the port costs were too high and much of the traffic moved to a smaller port about 5 hours away by rail.
Yes these are not moderated cranes. The limit is up to the operator. But they do have wind speed indicators for a better sense of judgment.
I was wrong about my previous statement though. We have two 180 ton cranes and two smaller 90 ton. The 180 are a lattice boom, and the smaller are extension booms. It doesn't happen these days anymore, but I have had the opportunity to sit behind the controls of a small grove crane. Even still the amount I was liable for was enough for me to decline. Plus the whole clutch thing is a bit much to process on top of everything else.
