January 17 - Cleaning Up Leftovers

The Plumber -

The activity at the church was intense the last couple of weeks, all the digging, piping, and floor smoothing going on. Looking back on my photos, I find a few pictures of interest that did not get published. So today I am cleaning up some leftovers from this active stretch.

When Don was laying out the drain line plan, he studied the print then walked around with a shovel and a tape measure. After determining the correct locations, he dragged the shovel through the dirt leaving the layout plan in the dirt. Greg followed with the trackhoe, leaving a trench in his wake.
I have already written about the writing, pictures and hieroglyphs on the walls and for the plumber it is lines in the sand.
Wherever Don roamed with his shovel, the trenches soon followed.

More Giant White Board Markings -

OK, Greg, what is with this snake and the epitaph? This is the partial burial site of  a tube through which the water main from the well into the building will be run. The tube runs down five feet below grade and horizontal out of the building 18”. When the well is dug, this will provide the ingress for the water into the building. Good thinking folks. It is a lot messier to run the pipes in after the concrete floor is poured.

The Wheelbarrow - 

Dirt was being hauled from the sanctuary to the kitchen area for a short time using wheelbarrows. Loading the hopper with shovels caused no difficulties, but was slow. A performance improvement measure was implemented. Load the hopper using the trackhoe bucket. While it was certainly faster, the load size increased significantly. Under this load, a flaw in the wheelbarrow was revealed.

The wheelbarrow was missing a fastener from the strap securing the axle. Not good. When Eric started to move the heavy load, the wheel went crooked. Lacking the factory approved replacement fastener, improvisation was necessary.





The maintenance engineer demonstrated skill with using available parts. Obviously, he was a student in the "if one is good, two is better, so five must be perfect" school of repair.
The repair brought to mind a story my uncle Ike once told me. He had a dogskin winter coat that was very warm and very heavy. He said whenever he used a wire coat hanger, the coat hanger deformed under load and the coat wound up on the floor. Tiring of this recurring event, he needed a better coat hanger. He fashioned one out of 3/8" curtain rod. After bending it into the proper shape, he welded a vertical rod directly below the hook, down to the bottom horizontal member. Many years after he manufactured it, he was showing it to me. "Now, this is a substantial coat hanger," he stated with obvious pride. Uncle Ike must have attended that same school.
The Man Said "Clear the Floor" -

When the floor needs to be cleared, everything must be off of the floor. If there is a table that still needs to be around since basic necessities of life, like the coffee maker, are  resting on it, then the table needs to levitate. That is the neat thing about these carpenters. When they need a bracket right now, they build a bracket right now.