Here's sand in yer eye, kid.
Sunday, April the 29th at 12:52 AM
in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Seven (1 year, 8 months ago)
I
t's hard to be a considerate neighbor when running a diesel compressor at 11:00pm at night. I'll admit, I was ready to call it quits, but Sally wasn't, and we only had a little bit left to do to finish our upper East wall. I balked though, and played the Good Neighbor card, and Sally cursed my weakness. Courtesy was a nice cover for laziness tonight.
I'll describe the sand blasting tonight as "intimidating." The compressor is big and loud (though easy to start), and the "pot" we fill with sand can handle about 180 pounds of sand and doesn't have a shut-off at the nozzle-tip. It's nice to have two people running the thing. The real difficulty is about 2 minutes after you start blasting. In our 48x30 upper sanctuary with it's 21' peak the room was filled with a plume of white and red dust thick enough to be called blinding. You really feel like you've entered an alien world with the worklights being the only visible points of reference, and only when you're within a few feet of them.
Part of the work took place about 17 feet up on the top of scaffolding, and that's when the loss of vision caused some hesitation for me. Movements became very deliberate, and we developed a knock system for turning the sand on and off. 3 knocks, cut the flow. 2 knocks - pause - 2 knocks, turn it back on. We tried a more complex knock sequence for "I've fallen and am hanging from the airhose by my neck." But it didn't work very well.
Anyhow we made some progress, and will try finish it tomorrow. Maybe by next month I won't still be tasting grit in my mouth.
4 Comments
2
1 year, 8 months ago
I will take your blog entry as confirmation that the "I've fallen and am hanging from the airhose by my neck" knock was not needed at this time.
3
1 year, 8 months ago
After you're done, someone could throw a handful of sand in your face and you'll just blink once and smile.
And loud is a subjective term. Normal (185 CFM or so) diesel compressors are a tad noisy. The battle cry of a 750 CFM Detroit Diesel-powered compressor is deafening. (which explains why nobody rents them in cities anymore).
And loud is a subjective term. Normal (185 CFM or so) diesel compressors are a tad noisy. The battle cry of a 750 CFM Detroit Diesel-powered compressor is deafening. (which explains why nobody rents them in cities anymore).
4
1 year, 8 months ago
Big Dog: You got me laughing (snorting) pretty good with the reference to a "real" compressor. I like the on-demand power and pressure from this little 125psi diesel unit, but I must say 750 cfm on tap sounds like it wouldn't be straining to keep sand in my eyes. My neighbors would love me even more...
JM: Heh - no hose marks on my neck yet, though I can't count the number of times I smacked my head into a rafter in the middle of my own private sandstorm.
AnnieK: Thanks so much for popping in. I see by your homepage's address you are indeed a good 8 to 9 hours ahead of my timezone. That means you can get 8 or 9 hours of extra work done before I even get my gloves on. Good luck on your project.
JM: Heh - no hose marks on my neck yet, though I can't count the number of times I smacked my head into a rafter in the middle of my own private sandstorm.
AnnieK: Thanks so much for popping in. I see by your homepage's address you are indeed a good 8 to 9 hours ahead of my timezone. That means you can get 8 or 9 hours of extra work done before I even get my gloves on. Good luck on your project.
Like to add your disturbed two cents?
Fancy comments are frowned upon - your WWW links will work though.
Want your own rockin' icon by your comment? Go to www.gravatar.com.
Want your own rockin' icon by your comment? Go to www.gravatar.com.
Posts in Time
Copyright © 2002 - 2009, Andrew Hughes
Running on Ubuntu | Answered by LigHTTPD | Foundation in Python | Structured by Django | Stored with PostgreSQL | Pretty with Flickr | Divided with 960.gs
⇐ rss 2.0 feed ยท some rights reserved ⇒
Last Visit: 2009-01-06 05:03:44.759908 -- Current Visit: 2009-01-06 05:03:44.759915
Running on Ubuntu | Answered by LigHTTPD | Foundation in Python | Structured by Django | Stored with PostgreSQL | Pretty with Flickr | Divided with 960.gs
⇐ rss 2.0 feed ยท some rights reserved ⇒
Last Visit: 2009-01-06 05:03:44.759908 -- Current Visit: 2009-01-06 05:03:44.759915
What a great site!
AnnieK