This morning, in a freezing strong wind, we connected the second pair of legs (number 2 and 6) back to the first pair (number 1 and 7) using U Channel steel elements. They are 4.77 metres long of a u shaped piece measuring 100mm high by 50mm wide and made of 8mm thick flanges on the top and bottom edges and the vertical webbing is 5mm thick. They weighs just about 50kg each.
Then, we put between the second pair of legs a thin metal strip to tie the legs together. This strip would normally be screwed down into the first floor joists but that isn’t in place yet!! This strip is 2.4metres long of a 5mm thick steel by 50mm wide. It was screwed onto a piece of 63mm CLS timber to help in lieu of the floor to stop it buckling if the legs tried to lean into each other.
Four-legs-up-and-connected
We finished off the morning work by moving along the scaffolding tower to the next pair of legs to do.
After lunch, we hoisted up the third set of legs (number 3 and 5), these being also of the light duty square box steel measuring 100mm by 50mm with 5mm wall thickness. Each of these legs weighs 65kg. it was blooming chilly, well freezing actually, in the strong breeze up there on top of the scaffolding tower!!
Next we hauled up two more U channel steel beams to connect these legs back to the previous legs (the second set, number 2 and 6). These horizontal steel pieces were the same specs as the previous u channel shaped beams used, so we now have a continuous connection from leg 1 to leg 2 and onto leg 3 and the same on the other side from leg 7 to leg 6 and on to leg 5.
The final job was to put the tie strip between these third pair of legs, just like last time.
Six-legs-up-and-connected
We did have one incident at this point, the wind picked up a bit and blew over our tall wooden crane leg and caused some minor damaged two thirds the way up. We had moved it out of the way and it was sitting on its spreading out support arms but there was enough strength in the wind to knock it off balance (especially with a metal bar unbalancing it at the top) and it came crashing over and landed across one of the steel I beams and ramming the steel bar down onto the concrete slab. Fortunately, we were not in the way of this crash!.
We finished off the afternoon by moving the scaffold tower over to the final position for hoisting up the seventh and final leg, which we will tackle on Saturday.