Two men,one demountable, no crane, no probs.

[billbeee]

One of the best examples of using a low tech solution to a problem that I have ever seen, was many years ago at Wattie Creek (Daguragu).
Young Henry (we called him Young Henry 'cos he was younger than us when we first knew him as an apprentice. He's in his 50's now but he's still Young Henry), bowls up on the job in a small truck and proceeds to put in the foundations for a 12m x 3.5m demountable health clinic.
Seeing as we were a few hundred kilometers from home (600klm SW Darwin) I asked him how much it was costing for crane hire.
"Nothing" he said. "Don't need one".
Sure enough he didn't. With the timber he had in the back of his small truck, and help from the truckie, he used a simple machine to lift the fairly large building off the semi and position it correctly on his foundations.

So you are all practical guys reading this, how would you do it?

Another example of Young Henry's lateral thinking. We were at a party one night at nearby Top Springs, cops, nurses, schoolteachers etc. Word came in that there had been an accident on the highway, so just about everybody raced down to the scene.
A guy had run into some cattle, killed one, wrote off his car, but luckily was not too badly injured himself. Henry takes in the situation, cops and nurses have it all under control, so he gets his gear out of the truck and to much outrage from the females present, proceeds to cut up the beast, as you do.

We had stews made with fillet steak for a while after that.

Cheers
Bill

[Iain]

Sort of reminds me of Officer Traing School, knarly old flight sergeant poses a problem '20 foot pole and one yard of rope, get it upright in 15 minutes', how is it done?
I failed this one

[joe greiner]

Trick question. OTS is the clue. Answer is turn to the sergeant and say, "Sergeant, get that pole upright in 15 minutes." Or something similar.

Joe

[Iain]

Or something similar.

Joe

Sgt or Cpl, never a WO, they really make life difficult for you, bit like who runs the hospital, Doctors or the Matron

[billbeee]

The simple machine that Henry used was a lever. I would like to say that he used a 3M. length of sturdy timber, which he certainly could have done.
What he actually used was a high lift jack, (kangaroo jack) that is just about a standard piece of equipment with 4WD vehicles. The jack is itself another example of a lever in a more compact form. It made his job easier, but he could have done it with a length of timber..
Another key item in the job was what I call for want of a better name, a pigsty.

Here's how he lifted the demountable building off the semi-trailer and onto his foundations. I have no doubt that the company that made the buildings designed them and the foundations to be able to unload them in this way. Henry didn't invent it and neither did the engineers at the company he was sub-contracting to. This method of raising heavy weights must have it's origins in pre-history.

• He backed the semi in between his two rows of 450 square concrete foundations, until it was in just about the right position.
• He built 8 pigstys, four along each side of the building until he couldn't get any more timber under the demountable.
• Then with the jack he went round and lifted each one 50mm and popped in another timber, until he had the thing sat up clear of the truck deck.
• The truck drives out from under the load.
• He then proceeds to drop each support in 50mm steps until the thing sits firmly on the foundations.

Easy peasy, it took two men about 4 hours to do the job. I would have taken a crane half an hour, plus 12 hrs traveling time.

Cheers
Bill

[Woodlee]

The simple machine that Henry used was a lever. I would like to say that he used a 3M. length of sturdy timber, which he certainly could have done.
What he actually used was a high lift jack, (kangaroo jack) that is just about a standard piece of equipment with 4WD vehicles. The jack is itself another example of a lever in a more compact form. It made his job easier, but he could have done it with a length of timber..
Another key item in the job was what I call for want of a better name, a pigsty.

Here's how he lifted the demountable building off the semi-trailer and onto his foundations. I have no doubt that the company that made the buildings designed them and the foundations to be able to unload them in this way. Henry didn't invent it and neither did the engineers at the company he was sub-contracting to. This method of raising heavy weights must have it's origins in pre-history.

• He backed the semi in between his two rows of 450 square concrete foundations, until it was in just about the right position.
• He built 8 pigstys, four along each side of the building until he couldn't get any more timber under the demountable.
• Then with the jack he went round and lifted each one 50mm and popped in another timber, until he had the thing sat up clear of the truck deck.
• The truck drives out from under the load.
• He then proceeds to drop each support in 50mm steps until the thing sits firmly on the foundations.

Easy peasy, it took two men about 4 hours to do the job. I would have taken a crane half an hour, plus 12 hrs traveling time.

Cheers
Bill

The hylift jack is a great piece of equipment .I used one to jack my 3m sq garden shed and slab out of the ground so I could move it across my block I just dug a hole on two sides ,put the jack down the holes ,placed the lift foot under the slab floor and jacked away until I had it high enough to place a coppers log under the slab on each side .

Then I got my mate with his front end loader and with his help as a driver ,pushed the slab ,shed and all its contents across the block to the new spot ,using other logs as rollers (egyptian invention) .Took all of half an hour .
Saved me a sh*t load of work .

Shed is still there and looks like it has been there forever.

Kev