Tower safety for small wind

[keithturtle]

This is a document in process, good stuff for those of us who will climb

http://smallwindconference.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/BP-doc-ver-4.pdf

Turtle

[TimS]

Pretty thorough.  Thanks for the nice read.

[TimS]

I might add, I sure hope OHSA doesn't get involved up in my neck of the woods, but there is some good common sense in the doc.  I liked the knots.  I've worked around cranes a bit.  That is a lot more hand signals then we needed when we worked it  but they are cool.  When thunder comes, lower the thing down and walk away.  Its raining and thundering right now outside, in the burned out zone, with the turbine spinning.  Hope it doesn't rain too hard.  Best,
Tim

[SparWeb]

Thanks Keith!
That's exactly the harness and double-lanyard I have in my kit.
Not that I've actually climbed any towers yet.  Two possibilities have come my way to disassemble some truss towers, but neither turned out to be suitable for a turbine, when seen in person.
Maybe I should sell the harness to Chris Olson!

[Perry1]

Cool stuff. I have climb certification training every year and every time the show the pictures of the guy with 'exploded' testicles from hanging on a harness too long. Needless to say, I never forget my suspension trauma straps in my climb bag. A picture is worth a thousand winces.

Perry

[SparWeb]

I have been TRYING to forget that PICTURE ever since I saw it Perry!

Thanks.  a bunch.  for reminding me. 

[Frank S]

If you can see the service basket  you should know there is only one way to get out of one of those if you need to while it has a load hanging

 first you climb and climb

then you walk the outside nearly impossible  to effectively use the harness for anything more than  eye candy to please a safety man who is 300 feet below you  and while you are 100 feet out on the boom

once in the basket what use is it anyway

[thirteen]

I like the safety harness class MSHA ands OSHA put on about 9-10 years ago they showed a man who fell working on a bridge and was hammered by winds . OK They were so proud that the harness saved his life. A friend looked it up and what it didn't say was yes his life was saved but he had every bone (vertabra) in his back broken and was living on life support.  Oh it serves it's purpose but sometimes the risk is not worth the end result. But it does save lives.

[fabricator]

My kind of tower safety is, install gin pole and cables, tilt tower down and do service the turbine, tilt tower back up and remove gin.
This is coming from someone who has spent a career at the top of 40' ladders, 130' manlifts, swing stages, bosuns chairs, crane buckets, even repelling, these days homey don't climb it's not fun and never was, if you don't have a healthy fear of it, it'll kill ya.

[neilho]

if you don't have a healthy fear of it, it'll kill ya.

True. The guys with no fear are scarier than climbing.

I like climbing, myself. And for quite a few machines, it's faster to climb the tower and just do the minor task than it is to tilt the tower down, then back up. Not all, though.

Nothin' like the views from up there, too.

Thanks for the post, Keith. Mostly good stuff in there, though I often drop things like tag lines intentionally (making sure everybody is out of the way first) because it makes the job go faster. I question the need for a ban.

Neil