Today, we tackled the big job of lifting up our Bent Rafter, the K Ridge that has a 45 degree bend in it’s length. It was tricky because the middle of the rafter at the elbow joint is the heaviest part but we needed this to go up first into the air and it wanted to keep flicking over as it naturally wanted the heavier bit lower down! We first tried lifting the rafter using just one motorised winch and even though we managed to get the wall end up and over the wall, we couldn’t lift up the other end high enough to get it engaging into the metal bracket on the steel I-Beam!!
We recorded a short video sequence of this Fun and Games we had today!
We brought in our second tower into play and tried to help lift but we were struggling with the whole length of the rafter being just too long to go in straight! Also, the control box is on a short lead so we decided to abandon the day and bring in the motor winch to extend the cable with 10metres of 5-core mains wires so the we can try again on Monday and have both of us being near each end of the rafter and also keep our finger on the control box buttons to lift or lower and we push and heave the rafter around and get it in place!! We have also other ideas that would help us in the long run, a backup plan!
K-Ridge-down-again
We never did weigh this rafter but it’s jolly heavy!! Smile!