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The I-Beam
May 25, 2007
Day One
Builder Scott loves to scavenge. He’s found two steel i-beams. One is 27 feet long. The other is shorter. He thinks the long one would be great in the cottage, and he wants the other one for his house. The guy who has them just wants to get rid of them, and offers them to us for $25. Also provided is a crane to put them into a truck that we’ll rent. Scott asks me to come with him to rent the truck as he’s lost his driver’s license. He assures me that my part in this little endeavor will take a half hour. I agree.
Scott wants to go rent the truck in the morning. Mornings are problematic for me since I go to bed somewhere in the 4am range and get up around noon. We negotiate, and I agree to be ready at 10:30am.
Scott shows up at 11:20, telling me that he was running a bit late, and thought I’d like a little more sleeping time. That would have been nice if he had called me beforehand to tell me that. But of course, that’s impossible because Scott doesn’t have a cell phone.
We get to the rental place around noon, where we wait for nearly 20 minutes to see the owner, Carl. He’s in a bad mood. He’s even more pissed when he prints our contract and we go look at our truck, which Scott claims is too small, and insists he’s reserved the bigger one. Carl does everything on an ancient-looking computer, and he’s using some sort of application that runs from DOS circa 1989. He is unable to change our contract to the bigger truck without printing out three different copies, all of which I must initial in several places and sign. When I ask if he could just start over and print just one with all the correct information on it, he accuses me of accusing him of cheating us.
Nevertheless, we get the truck, and I’m expected to drive it. I have put 5000 miles on my car in eleven years. Does that tell you how much I enjoy driving? Carl backs it out of the parking space, points it toward the gate, and I get in. I drive it 50 feet out of the place, past the point where Carl can see, and wait for Scott, who’s gone around the corner to get my car. We switch vehicles and go to another rental place and get a jackhammer. And a compressor. Scott wants to remove the concrete to get rid of some of the weight before putting it in the truck. I come home, assuming I’ve done my part for the day.
Scott gets to my place about an hour later. The jackhammering hasn’t gone well, because we haven’t rented a big one. The compressor for the big one is gi-normous and we can’t transport it. So we got the smaller one, and it wasn’t powerful enough. The crane guys wanted to leave. So, they put the i-beams into the truck, and Scott figured he’d jackhammer after we got it into the backyard.
My property is L-shaped. My house was built in 1910, and I’m the second owner. The original family had the whole square, and built the house next door in the late 1940’s for their son to live in after World War II. It was sold in the late 1950’s to my neighbor Katina, so my lot is everything around it. There’s an alley next to Katina’s, and the garage is behind her house. There’s about 25 feet of grass between the back of her house and the garage.
The plan is to back the truck into the space, tie something around the end of the i-beam, attach the other end to the tree with a chain, then drive the truck forward and let it fall out into the yard.
The first step was to try to turn the i-beam over so the concrete-filled side was facing up. Scott had this contraption called a “come-along” (defined as “a simple ratchet-and-pawl cable winch used for pulling, lifting, or stretching") which he tied around the beam and pulled the lever a bunch times, and sure enough, that thing turned over.
We could only back the truck so far into the yard, as there’s an electrical wire that runs from my house to the garage that powers a single light bulb, which is currently burned out. There are also some old clothesline poles in front of the garage that are set in concrete in ground. So, not a lot of room to maneuver. Our first idea was to attach the rusty old chain Scott had in his truck to the hook on the come-along near the end of the i-beam and tie the other end around the tree. I love that tree. It’s really big. And does lean some. I told Scott if something happened to the tree I’d never forgive him. He pooh-poohed me.
So, he gets in the truck and starts driving forward. The chain promptly breaks. The i-beam doesn’t move an inch. Scott goes somewhere and returns with a much bigger chain and these two straps which he claims can hold up to 10,000 pounds. We try again. The straps come off. We try again. The straps come off. We try again and again, and finally, we tie the crap out of the straps, and the i-beam begins to move.
The last hurdle is letting it drop. We can’t let the beam fall on the bumper of the truck, as it will take the whole thing off. I haven’t paid for any extra insurance on the truck. And we know that Carl, owner of the truck rental company, will be surly. So, we put a few wooden boards on the bumper. The idea is drive the truck forward real fast and hope that when the beam falls it will clear the bumper. We put some boards on the ground hoping the beam will fall on top of them, making it easier to scoop it up later to put it into the structure.
Trouble is, there’s only about 4-6 feet of room to drive forward. The alley is narrow, and there’s a fence that we don’t want to bash into. So, Scott backs up the truck. The beam moves backward, and then gets totally wedged into that metal piece that’s sticking out of the truck. That’s a piece that’s welded onto the other shorter beam that’s also in the truck. It takes us quite a while to rectify that. Finally, Scott gets back into the truck, guns it, lurches forward, and the beam falls out and hits the ground with a giant thud.
It’s exactly in the right place. It’s not sticking out into the alley. The tree hasn’t fallen down. I have successfully jumped out of the way. Scott hasn’t bashed into the fence. It took six hours, and we did knock down one of Katina’s clothesline poles, but somehow, his hair-brained plan has worked out.
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1Patti Puckett | July 3, 2007
heheheh I am living vicariously through your step by step story; now I am wondering? This Ibeam was put in its place on may 25th? Its now July 2--where are we in the journey to and through progress? Will check back