[ Me and Morgyn leaning against the side of a big black pickup truck. An IBC water tank sits in the bed. I have a really, really goofy smile going on. ]
As part of the ongoing process of making things less horrible around here, a couple weekends ago we wrestled one of our two IBC tanks up onto the roof of the container. Why? Because of gravity.
This was a bit of a process. At about a hundred pounds when empty, they aren’t _that_ heavy for their size, but that’s still more than most people want to haul up a ladder. So we got creative.
Step the first involved getting the IBC into the back of the pickup, which is easy enough; that happens every time someone runs into town to get water. But that wasn’t near high enough to get it onto the roof without more finagling.
So we used the van.
That top pic? is me & Morgyn celebrating backing the pickup as close to the van as we could manage.
This close:
[ One corner of the lowered tailgate of the truck would be touching the side of the van, except that it’s in the gap directly above the rear tire. The other corner is probably six inches away from the side of the van. ]
Then, with me on the roof of the van, CJ in the pickup bed, & Morgyn standing with one foot in the bed & the other inside the van’s side door, we hauled the IBC up & onto the roof. Success!
The next step? Backing the pickup as close to the side of the container as possible.
…this required some cogitation, because I’d envisioned the necessity for someone (me) to be on the roof with the IBC in case it decided to go slidey, & also for someone very familiar with the van (me) to do the backing up part. Fortunately Morgyn is _also_ very familiar with the van, being one of its previous owners, so they did the backing up, I rode along on the roof, & CJ handled ground crew & videography.
[ The van, seen from the side. I’m on the roof, grimly hanging onto the IBC. Morgyn’s behind the wheel. The van starts backing up, slowly, to the left; it goes about ten feet before the van and the video both stop. ]
They got the van pretty close to the container. How close?
[ To the left, the back of the van; to the right, a wall of straw bales. There’s probably most of a foot between the bumper and the straw. ]
… not as close as we got the pickup, but it worked out.
Then, of course, came the part we didn’t get any pictures of. This consisted of me squeezing around the IBC to the back of the van, surveying the situation, shoving the IBC around some, then squeezing BACK around it to the front, then repeating that about six times. Yeah, there was only about six inches of roof left on either side of the IBC. So what? I had the IBC to hold on to.
Then Morgyn, who had the brain at that moment, handed up a pair of 2x4s to use as skids. That made a LOT of sense, but I still couldn’t get anywhere trying to push the IBC onto them, & CJ, up on the roof, couldn’t reach far enough to grab it & pull.
Eventually, inevitably, I wound up with one foot on the back of the van & the other on the roof of the container, hauling the IBC along the 2x4s. Which worked fine until the IBC moved far enough to cover the edge of the van roof. I didn’t have anything like the right leverage to haul myself up, so I thrust a hand in CJ’s direction & said, Pull.
He pulled. I think he was worried. He pulled hard enough he damn near threw me off the other side of the container.
… but I didn’t fall, & the IBC was close enough for both of us to grab & pull, & that was basically the end of it; we just had to rearrange the straw bales CJ had moved out of the way & that was it, that was the job.
Behold, an IBC!
[ A cube of white plastic surrounded by a metal cage, probably a yard in each dimension, sits on the container’s roof. It is surrounded by the single layer of straw bales that make up the roof’s insulation, with a few extra straw bales supplying a second layer around it. ]
How far did we have to haul the IBC to get it from the van roof to the top of the container?
This far!
[ To the left, the container roof, with the IBC in place. To the right, the van. There’s probably two feet between the van roof and the edge of the straw bale wall, plus the thickness of a straw bale before the actual roof starts. ]
… yeah that went about as smoothly as it was gonna.
Alas, none of us thought to hand CJ’s camera to Morgyn before CJ got on the roof & we got that part going, or there would be LOTS more pictures of me making poor safety decisions & once again, inexplicably, not dying about it.
I credit my patron saint. Who’s my patron saint? Clint Barton, of course, patron of coffee drinkers, extremely depressed people, & anyone making poor safety decisions.
Next up, adventures in plumbing. Which usually doesn’t involve drilling a hole an inch anna half across in corten steel, or so I’ve been told.
