Masonry Magazine January 2012 Page. 46
SCAFFOLDING
Drew Lenn of D. Lenn Masonry in Pensacola, Fla., faced such a job recently. "We were doing a public library and only had about 10 feet of room on one long side," Drew says. "It was easy with our elevating scaffolding. I just put a pipe on one fork and picked up the 36-foot-high towers from the side. I drove up in the hole, set them down at the wall, and backed out. We landed a tower about every 10 minutes. We fed the scaffold from the end; we have five boards back there so we just rolled everything down the wall. We would have been there forever with frames."
Sloping sites solved
CHUCK MORTON, a field super with Senate Masonry, solved a tough problem with his elevating scaffolding. "Not only did we have cut-up walls on this Regal Cinema site, but the ground elevation changed drastically so the towers were never level with each other. No problem. We just set the towers down, plumb them up, and go. The towers don't have to be level with each other, we crank the platform level. It just works like scaffolding should."
Tight areas hinder material handling
NOWADAYS, tight sites with tall buildings create another problem: feeding the scaffold. Sometimes, there is physically no room to maneuver a forklift, or the walls are too tall for the forklift to reach the scaffold. The best solution is a materials hoist such as those made by Beta-max. Many contractors own one that employs a trolley to cantilever the hoist over the side of the scaffold; however, that limits the load capacity.
At Non-Stop we developed a trap-door that installs in the laborers' platform, and a bracket to mount the hoist in a fixed position above the trapdoor. (See Photo 4.) The advantages of this new method are many. The hoist can safely lift its full rated capacity and height (up to 200 feet). The trapdoor can be mounted anywhere along the length of the scaffold, reducing material-handling distance. Multiple units can be installed on a long scaffold.
Try it now
IF YOU ARE WAITING for a project with long, straight walls to begin using elevating scaffolding, you're likely missing out on some money-saving opportunities. Veteran mason contractors are reaching for their elevating scaffolding first, for virtually every job. They've learned it is far more flexible and versatile than they ever imagined, and it saves them a lot of money. IMAS
Justin Breithaupt Jr. is co-owner of Non-Stop Scaffolding Inc. Breithaupt's involvement in Non-Stop Scaffolding goes all the way back to the '70s, when he and his dad developed Non-Stop for their own masonry contracting business. He is a frequent speaker at local and national masonry association meetings, and a founder of the ANSI Adjustable Scaffolding Safety Standards committee. Breithaupt can be reached at breithaupt@gmail.com or 800-845-0845.