This is some heavy metal

DrewJD82

DrewJD82

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The last 14 months have been spent planning one of the biggest projects I’ve taken on at work since I’ve been here, replacing the cooling tower support frame for our chiller plant.

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The support beams rusted out and need to be replaced. Since the building is cooled entirely by this chiller system and we have several large tenants in the building, we have to get it done in 2.5 days because we can’t disrupt the flow of business to the tenants. Over the week we’ve picked everything off it that’s not leaving the roof, tonight they’re draining the cooling towers of all the water and disconnecting everything.

Tomorrow morning a crane is coming in lift those two towers about 50 feet in the air while a crew goes to town chopping up the old frame, then the new frame gets built, cooling towers dropped back down, connections made and they get filled back up. At the same time this is happening, there’s two different crews in the actual chiller plant making repairs/improvements then re-insulating the whole thing.

We’ve gotta keep work going around the clock to pull it all off by the deadline and while my blood pressure is ok right now, every bit of this project has to go off without a hitch in an exact order or this coming Mon/Tues are going to be absolute hell!!
 
Achilles said:
HOLY SHIT!, that's some nasty corrosion.

"Failing infrastructure."

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Indeed.

When I first took over 6 years ago I had a proposal to replace the beams for $25K. I had to move the project back a bit due to other projects and when I got the new proposals we were looking at $150K for the exact same work to be done!

Surprisingly, it passed a recent 25-year structural inspection because the rust spots aren’t under the heaviest loads, just where water from the tower hit them the most. I can go another 5 years before I *HAVE* to replace it, but fuck that, I want this done and over with!
 
Warmart said:
Geesh man, that is a HUGE f'in job, no doubt. I'm sure there's going to be hitches arising, seems there always are - but I hope it goes well for you!
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Going to be interesting to see what shakes loose during this. I’m used to PLENTY of things going awry in normal constructions where people are working with smaller materials than 2-ton steel beams. Hahahaha cutting some conduit or 2x4’s to make something else fit is easy…..we have no room for error with these beams!

My biggest concern is the roof, actually. We just put that on a couple year’s back and “2-ton steel beams penetrating surface” isn’t on the warranty :rofl
 
Achilles said:
Be sure your crew is fully aware of tetanus!
Got it from a small rusty nail scratch years back. Didn't think nothing of it at the time.
Big mistake.
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In this case, I just collect their COI’s so I know they’re insured to work on the property. :rofl My own staff isn’t touching any of this outside of binging the parking cones over to block the parking lot off. We get our hands into some construction stuff, but something like this had to be hired out. Even if we had the capabilities, I wouldn’t want to deal with the liability.

Kinda surprised me how much stuff we end up hiring out just for liability reasons, IE- we can pressure wash our own roofs easily and save a SHITLOAD of money, until one hole gets put in that roof and then we gotta pay, so I hire it out to our roofing vendor.
 
We left last night FAR ahead of schedule. It wasn’t too hot yesterday so I took a chance and shut the chiller down early for everyone to get an early start on the physical disconnections of the tower. Heading in in a few minutes to start prepping the parking lot for the crane.

Working with those guys yesterday/last night made me really glad I spent as much time finding the right people for this, these guys run their crews like a tightly run band and with a project this big it puts my mind at ease seeing how they’re just on it. Our HVAC company puts their techs through pretty intense schooling and some of the younger guys get as excited about this work as we would knowing we’re getting an amp delivery.
 
I love managing projects like that!
Very cool Drew!!

I ran a crew of 6, on a Saturday, framing an entire house in 12 hours. Tbf, it was just a rancher, but still.

And actually, the fact that it wasn't a big house, meant I had to think about pairs of people finishing their tasks, then having nothing to do. So I had to do what's called 'fast-track', in that I wouldn't try to get one part 100% complete, and then go onto the next part, e.g., build the entire floor, then start the walls, but instead, only build one half, so the front walls could be started as soon as possible, to keep everyone busy.

And, it was all volunteer, for Habitat for Humanity. And after seeing how the owners took care of the place, I vowed I'd never do it again. :rolleyes: But that's another story...
 
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