A Scrapper's Dream

**Patriot76** · 04-07-2014, 04:42 AM

This is the start of the story of the boilers. As said before, they are about 34 x 40 ft. rectangles stretching up for 10 stories. They contain steam pipe encased in plaster. The bottom forms a chute with foot and a half concrete walls.

This is a picture of the first cut when we found out the thickness of the concrete.

This is after we tried to jack hammer it out and found out the work we were in for.

**Patriot76** · 04-07-2014, 05:17 AM

This is the other boiler before any cuts are made.

This is the first layers of pipe cut. The torch men walked to the end of the row of steam pipe, cutting it as the moved back and let it drop to the basement.

A picture of workers cutting the steam pipe three floors up. They are cutting upper layers of pipe as they stand on the lower layers. When they get to the end they will cut what they have been standing on as they work there way back to the openings. The pipe drops to the basement level inside the boiler to be picked up by skid loaders and taken to the pit to be pulled out by the excavator with a thumb bucket.

A couple of pictures of the sparks falling three floors into the bottom of the boiler. The first one is looking at the bottom of the steam pipe they are standing on and cutting and the second one is the bottom of the boiler before the log jam in the next post.

**Patriot76** · 04-07-2014, 05:37 AM

We knew we should hammer out the concrete and create a bigger opening at the bottom of the boiler. A lesson was learned for not taking our time. We created a log jam or beaver dam in the bottom of the boiler and had to lower two workers two floors into the boiler to unjam it. It took about an hour and the workers were literally hanging like spiders as they picked there way through the mess.

**Yunkman** · 04-07-2014, 06:06 AM

Thanks for the pics, Patriot. I was wondering how that project was going. Smoke, fire and danger; definitely a young man's job. You'll deserve a medal for persistence when this is over.