Tuesday, June 26th, 2018
Hello class, for the first segment of our new series on how to properly set and install guard rails properly while following all the mandatory requirements that are not optional to follow, we will be watching a six and a half hour instructional video of how NOT to do it, and point out what should have been down instead as we go along. Wait, what's that? Our VHS is out of commission? Well in that case, go ahead and read this summary, it should prepare you well enough for the quiz at the start of next week's class. Take one and pass it on!
Once upon a time, in a land not so far away for some, but far far away to others, there dwelt a pad devoid of any grass, mushroom, or flowering plant. Actually, there was only one flowering plant, and that's because there was a tank battery (a miniature plant, technically (not the biological use of the word though (#explainingapun))) in the process of being built (flowering). There also dwelt near this place a person who was driving to work. It was morning. 6:17 to be exact. When he got there, he and two others were sent to install five pieces of guard rails around some electrical panels, and they were told to make it pretty. That meant that all of the pieces should be in a straight line, and the corners should be square, and also in a straight line. Simple. Easy peasy. Except... only half the holes could b dug with the augur of the skidsteer, the others had to be dug by hand using frost bars and post-hole diggers. One person would break up the ground with the seven-foot-long fifteen-pound iron bar, and the other would take the dirt away with the diggers. By and by, three of the five guards were set. Things were looking up.
[Switching to first-person now... ahhahahae]
But then, everything changed when the measuring tape attacked. Only the foreman, master of all four guard rail placement methods, could fix it. But then, when we needed him most, he vanished and left to the new pad. Fifteen minutes passed and my coworkers and I discovered a new way to contact the foreman; a cellular phone from AT&T. (Although its coverage is great, it's got a long way to go before it's going to be used by anyone.) But I believe that the foreman can solve anything.
You see, we had a problem. Between each of our corner pieces there was twenty-six feet, in which we had to fit two ten-foot guard rails, with three feet of space between each one. And the measuring tape doesn't lie. You do the math. Yeah... that wasn't happening. We looked around site to see if maybe there was a five-foot guard rail or something, but no luck. Perhaps we could just use one guard and split the difference between the corners...? But that wouldn't work either, for you mustn't have more than a five-foot gap between guards. After calling the foreman to see what he had to say, we were less than ecstatic. We had to tear out the ones we had placed and simply push them down an extra couple feet past the electrical box to give us enough distance. Annoying, yes, but a simple plan to execute.
Or so it would seem. After we pulled them all out and had re-dug the holes for the first one, I had an idea: "How about we just put enough dirt back in to make sure it doesn't move, then go on to the next one till we get them all lined up. That way if we have to change one it won't be too hard." The answer was no. "We already have a plan that will work, let's get on with it." Being the newest and youngest hand there, I had no choice but to comply. Eventually, after much more digging and setting, and after compacting the dirt around the posts nice and tight so they wouldn't budge, we came to the last corner piece. When we put it in place... it was not square. Like at all. There was no smudgin the lines with this baby, it was WAY out of line. So... we had to pull a few more out and redo them. And then redo a few more, all the way until we had pulled them all out, except one, and reset them again. (One corner was out of line, but despite my saying otherwise, they said it was good. Which.. it wasn't. Oh well.) This was also a fairly hot day, and with a dry wind to boot. And a lot of frost bar work. That thing gets tiring after a while, once you've been digging and compacting with it for a few hours. But anyways, our third try at getting them proved a failure, as our line wasn't straight, and the only way to make it straight would put our final guard rail three feet away from the electrical box, when it was supposed to be five feet away.
We were just about to pull them out again when the foreman showed up. He didn't like that it was slightly crooked, but he didn't want us to have to go do it all over again, so we compromised and made it work. And that's how we managed to string out a simple project over the course of several hours. Oh, and did I mention that setting guards is my least favorite part of my job? Well it is. And that's what we did all day long. Hahae, near the end I could hardly keep from laughing at the whole situation, it really was unique. Well, I guess that's just how it goes sometimes. Hopefully tomorrow will be better!
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