Ashland we have liftoff

Twas the day of installation, the sun was shining, the birds were chirping, the fish were swimming, and the stars aligned for a beautiful day.

The Hydro Hooligans who are a couple of professional dam mechanics, emphasis on the hooligan so I am told. They showed up an hour before the crane so we could rig up stuff, get organized, and come up with a game plan of whats going to happen. They had been to the site once before to check it out but its always important to go over the game plan BEFORE it happens.

The crane and the Ashland Electric Department showed up at about the same time. The Electric Department and I thought it would be a good idea to put blankets on the live 13kv lines so the crane operator felt better about the weird situation. I also applaud our crane guy over at Davis crane, he had never done something like this before but he was very chill and professional.

Once everyone was setup we had to rotate the turbine into the correct orientation. So we picked one side with the crane and rotated it with the gantry. It was a bit awkward and wonky but it worked just fine. I was there to make sure the wires and hydraulic lines didnt get pinched. We hired the professionals who have done shit this before, and we figure if we did it again we could do it ourselves but this time we wanted some help to made sure things went well.

The next thing we had to do was to get the tilt of the turbine to be indentical with the penstock. We ended up measuring 39.5 degrees, so with two chain hoists we set the angle and everything was going well.

Its always cool to see the progression of things like crane work. The crane picked the turbine up and was operating over the power lines which was a tad spooky but not terrible. Remember how we thought it only weighed about 4000? We were a tad off. It ended up being about 5500lbs which was tricky as we were running into the edge of the cranes capacity at the reach we needed, but we measured and it seemed just on the edge but within limits.

The thing that ate into some amount of time was the crane had to re position twice, as he was sinking on one side and the crane wouldnt let him continue. He was close to the foundation and im sure there has been settling over the years and he sank a couple inches, but it actually let him re position the truck into a better spot so we would have the reach needed to get down into the turbine hole.

Now that the crane was re-positioned we swung the turbine over towards its home, where we were waiting with floaties.

When we got the turbine closer we had to rotate it into the hole because this I beam that I am standing on was too heavy to move without the crane. So we twisted it in and the Hooliganing began.

This particular part of the tailrace is very deep, I measured about 8 feet or so. Standing in this area just isnt going to happen. So floaties were needed to fasten some bolts and get the wires and hydraulic lines to the right place.

You can also see that the butterfly valve cant fully seal, so theres splashing water which is pretty annoying, but hey we got a guy for that! Everything went pretty smoothly a little bit of wrestling to get the turbine in the right spot. It was a bit tricky to actually get the mating surfaces to kiss, we had to use chainfalls to winch the turbine and penstock together to get the bolts in. As the cable from the crane was bumping into the building.

Always cool to see a crane shot.

There's Reuven the Hooligan giving me the thumbs up. She's in, we did it boys. All the bolts went in, no drama. We had to move with the crane the I beam at the top of the picture into place, it supports the back end of the turbine. These peices are medium rotted out at the waterline but should be goodnuf. A job well done, and a good day. Everything with all the crane hiccups took about four hours. You may think we are close to getting it operating but boy, you are wrong, so wrong. This is the physical mountain, but there are many others that arent as heavy but more important. Wires, and paperwork, and more wires, and more phone calls.