“They’ll need a crane, they’ll need a crane…”

I missed them getting the bulldozer into the house and I did not want to miss seeing them get it back out again. I went down to the house at sunrise and started a stakeout, waiting.

I’m glad I went so early! They showed up with a crane a little before 8:00.

It was really cold and the wind had picked up. Cliff had left an airplane blanket in the car and I wrapped it around my ears. I was not expecting it to be so cold! Notice Jonathan in just a T-shirt? Even he eventually had to put on a jacket.

The crane backed onto the new gravel, toward the garage.

At first he got stuck. The he turned on his Torque Converter, the crane version of four-wheel-drive.

He was sinking in the mud. (We had flooding rain over the weekend.) But he got backed up pretty close to the house.

He extended the Outriggers. There are four of them, two on each side. Then he put on the Jack Floats. He sort of leveled the area under each with his foot, just kinda pushing the gravel leveler.

A car drove by that had eyelashes.

He put timbers under each jack float and then lowered them until the crane was raised up.

He took his time to be sure the crane was steady and stable. I was freezing! It was cold enough for Jonathan to even put on sleeves.

There is another thing on the front of the crane that I think is an outrigger beam. They lowered that, too. Then unhooked the, I forget the name, the red thing that looks like a fishing floater with a hook.

He pivoted the boom to get it under the power lines, then raised it.

He turned it back, lowered the cable and hooked up a different hook with a winch. He set them down on the ground and they did something. When he raised it again, the red hook thing was on the bottom. He turned the boom around again and lowered the red hook into a box, unhooked and secured it.

Jonathan had taken photos of how they had hooked up the bobcat when they got it in, so they looked at the photos on his phone.

Then he hooked some chains on, turned and extended the boom REALLY high.

They attached the chains to the little bulldozer.

As they lifted, it started to spin. I had a heart stopping concern for my piers, but the guys rushed in and steadied it.

Then it was up, over the wall and out of the house. Just like that.

They unhooked the chains from the bobcat.

They slowly lowered the chains into a container while they carefully made sure they didn’t tangle.

He put everything back, locked in the boom and retracted the outriggers.

When they were wrapping things up, I asked the names of everything. Then I googled to make sure I had it right. I forgot to ask about some things, but I think we will all sleep fine tonight anyway.

 “They’ll need a crane, they’ll need a crane…”

They Might Be Giants

There. Now you know more than you ever wanted to know about how the crane got a Bobcat out of our house. It took more time to make sure the crane was stable and didn’t hit the power lines than it took to move the bobcat.

Next: Framing – We have a floor!