Scaffolding

Lady Campanula

Lady Campanula

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Anyone out there into scaffolding? Here's a small but practical challenge.....

This 3T lump needs lifting about 6" so the trailer can be slipped out ( Slipped? It weighs 900kg on its own! ), then the ~8' wide load lowered 2'6" onto a keelbed and steel cradle, where it will stay a while.

I have two 4T x 8m. lifting strops, and I reckon I'll be able to bring the end-loops, in pairs, to the hooks of two 2T chain hoists, each slung from a port and a starboard scaffolding tower 9' ~ 9'6" apart and about 15' high.

One of the towers will 'enclose' the adjacent tree, and the two towers will be braced to each other, at height, by several horizontal cross-tie poles.

The alternative is a pro crane hire firm at upwards of £1500 + VAT.

Questions? Answers...?

;)
 
Move the car first?!

I see the base of the trailer is a ladder type affair - would it be possible to put some support underneath the wood beam that the keel is resting on to take most of the weight - move the trailer forwards, shift the supports around and repeat?
You'd still need the sideways support from the towers - but a significant load could be taken by the keel ?
 
Can you hire a couple of 2T mobile gantries? We have to lift our boat off the trailer to get at the lift keel and use a couple of gantries. Ours are only 1T with 500KG hoists and 3T srtrops as the boat weighs 1800Kg. You do need to make sure the beams are level or there can be quite a sideways force. Also the stops move forward and stern when they take the shape of the hull so there is quite a force trying to push the gantries apart. Once we had done this once and got things positioned/braced correctly it has been quite easy to do.
 
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Neils idea looks good - possibly from here - http://www.hirestation.co.uk/hirestation/catalogue/Gantries,+Beams+and+Towers/365854/detail/803.html

Having wanted to do something similar for my sons Pandora to transfer trailers a local scaffolder wanted £300 ish to provide a tower around it and it only weighs 1 tonne !!

In the end we floated it off - having lost a wheel from the trailer en-route and taking 3 days to recover the trailer from the side of an A road dual carriageway in the snow.....

Didnt think of hiring a gantry....... :( :(
 
Thanks for all the input.

FYI, the beam/ground height needs to be at least 12', for the boat is 9' and the trailer bed is 2' up. The boat is 7'9" wide, so the span of beam needs to be 9' minimum for the slings and chains to clear. There's a big tree preventing a HIAB-equipped cab from getting close enough to reach AND lift 3T, and a mobile crane capable enough is prohibitively expensive.

The agricultural 'thingy' shown just can't get close enough, because of the tree. The answer seems to be either suitably-sized gantries or scaffolding towers.

I've been quoted £300 for scaffolding and, as the exercise will need repeating, I won't be snapping that offer up just yet.

We've managed to lower the mast, using a 'sheerlegs' technique remembered from a PBO 'Boat Owners Sketchbook' of many years ago, and that saved us £150. The agri-lift, in a local farm supplies yard, cost us a crate of half-decent bottled cider. So we're still winning.

;)
 
I use a simple scaffolding system to transfer boats from ground to trailer and from drying mooring to trailer .
4 x farmers jacks ( with modified tubes fitted to slot scaf tube into) simple frame ( braced) 2 strops with a anti slip one to join them , jack up, roll trailer under, then lower, dismantle. The maximum so far is 3 tons plus but can go up to 5 ton with current strops.
BTW I have designed and built a scaffold to lift a 32 ton railway carriage move it 25 foot and back again ( don't ask why or a bureaucracy thread may start :D )
 
When I did similar things, I used two 5ton ratchet jacks to jack up the trailer (and boat) to the required height, blocked up the boat, let the jacks down, and pulled the trailer out. It never seemed particularly difficult, and as I had (still have) the jacks, it didn't cost anything.
 
I'm sure that the scaffolding idea is do-able. There are places on eBay that will sell scaffold tube and clamps quite reasonably. Better still, you might be able to pick up second hand stuff. As a general rule, try to ensure that all the bays in your scaffold structure are triangular - which will give you the stiffest structure. Try to have it as narrow as possible whilst still getting the boat and trailer in it, because otherwise the tension in the chain hoists (and the compresion in the top crossmembers of the structure) will be considerably more than the weight of the boat divided by the number of chain hoists!

Probably worth remembering that the Centre of Gravity on a Cutlass (fore-aft) is about where the foremost part of the keel touches the ground, so your front chain hoists and strops will be taking MUCH more than half the load. If you make the structure taller than you need, it will (a) reduce the inward load on the top crossmembers and (b) give you a nice frame if you want to sheet over it and work in the dry!
 
Hello all, I have a small Broads cuiser (Elysian 27) in my slipway and would like to lift/support it on a high tide so that I can work on it at low tide. It weights 3 ton, does anyone have any suggestions about the number of strops requied?
I plan to drive some scaffold poles into the ground permanantly
 
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