About twelve years ago, a younger and dumber pipe fitter/welder version of myself did some double pelican clip work. A pipe had blown out at the Paper Mill I was working at. I had to cut out and then re-weld in a new piece of 2” boiler feed-water line. The job was four stories up on the outside of the building. It was in a tangle of pipes that spanned from the main power boiler to the recovery boiler. We couldn’t get to it with the JLG man lift, there was just too much stuff in the way. We could only get within fifteen feet of the job.
So I climbed out of the basket, set some D-ring chokers and walked across those pipes to get to the job. There was a twelve inch I-beam at the edge of the building that had a 6” pipe hangered to it. That was what I stood/kneeled on for the whole job. Basically I spent an hour and a half on this stupid narrow ledge, while I cut out and stick welded that stupid pipe back in.
Later on back at the pipe shop one of the older and wiser fitters asked what our rescue plan had been. What if I had fallen and was dangling by my harness; what would we have done
We just stared back at him and said “Oh, we didn’t think about that.”
The older I get the less I like working up high.
Josh
