Almost everyone knows the facts about recycling: it’s good for the environment, it’s good for business, and the more material we can remove from the waste stream before it reaches a landfill, the better. To that end, serious inroads have been made to change attitudes toward recycling, increase the types of materials that can be recycled, and make it easier to do so.
Despite all those efforts, a substantial amount of waste remains after all the metal, wood, glass, paper, plastic, and green waste have been pulled out, and that material must ultimately be sent to the landfill.
For Washington’s King County, which includes Seattle and the surrounding area, that number is about 1.1 million tons per year. At the Bow Lake Transfer Station, the county’s largest, a fleet of Genie boom lifts is playing a role in replacing the existing facility with a new one. At the new facility, material will be compacted before it's sent off to landfill. That will reduce operating costs, lower the number of trucks hauling, and eliminate tons of CO2 pollution.
The concept of a transfer station is fairly simple. Trucks pick up waste put on the curb by area residents. Then, rather than hauling the garbage directly to a landfill, they bring it to a central collection point, where it is dumped, transferred to larger trucks, and hauled away. At Bow Lake, that hauling and dumping cycle happens several hundred times a day. In nearly 35 years of operation, the current facility has become outdated, undersized, and sorely in need of replacement.
Making a connection
Apex Steel, Redmond, Wash., is erecting structural steel for the new $80-million transfer and compaction station that will replace the existing facility in 2013.
During earlier stages of the project, Apex relied on Genie S-80 telescopic booms to help assemble the roof trusses, one of the most critical features of the site’s design.
“This was one of the more challenging aspects of the job, and one in which the Genie lifts were just invaluable,” said Jim Greene, field superintendent.
Each full-span truss consisted of four parts, which were constructed in pairs on the ground. The two-piece section was then lifted by crane to rest on a temporary shoring tower with a specially-fabricated head. There, it was connected, or “spliced,” to an identical section from the other side. “To make that happen, we would have one lift extended and spotting to make sure the section was centered on the tower, and, at the same time, have a second one out there ready to make that secondary splice,” said Greene.
Making each splice involved inserting and fastening 104 1-3/8-inch-diameter bolts. “So we would then use two Genie lifts at that splice location to bolt it up and mate the two sections,” said Greene. “It made aligning the bolts a whole lot easier. Each bolt probably weighed three pounds. We simply loaded up the platform, went up, and got it done.”
Each one of the 104 bolts had to be torqued down, so the boom lifts’ platforms also were loaded with torqueing equipment. “Without the capacity of the Genie lifts, we would have been struggling, to say the least,” said Greene.
Delivering the goods
At the peak of the steel erection, Green said Apex had four Genie telescoping booms on site—two S-80s and two S-60s to reach the project’s 78-foot maximum heights. Apex also used a pair of Genie GS-1930 and GS-2632 scissor lifts on the job. Even after the main structural work was in place, the boom lifts continued to provide much-needed access as secondary work and follow-up welding continued. Greene said the units themselves performed extremely well. He attributes a good deal of that to the condition in which they were delivered and maintained by their supplier, Papé Rents, which has 70 locations in the western United States.
“We are working with Erik Strecker and Papé’s Seattle branch. They’ve been outstanding right from the outset,” said Greene. “We provided them job-specific info—type of work being done, elevations, type of fuel we prefer, whether we needed 2- or 4-wheel drive and so on—and they put together the lineup of equipment they felt would best meet our needs.”
Greene said Papé was right on the money. “We haven’t had any major problems, but I know that if I call them, they will have a mechanic out here within an hour.”
“We worked with two other rental companies who were initially our main suppliers, but really became dissatisfied with both the upkeep on the equipment and the reaction time when we reported problems,” said Greene. “We still use them, but they’ve been relegated to supplying only the smaller stuff. Customer service is key in this business. Papé obviously understands that.”
In with the new
The new Bow Lake Transfer Station is set to begin accepting trash in 2013. Until then, the existing facility remains operational even as the new one rises behind it.
“This has been a really nice project thus far,” said Greene. “It’s not a stretch to say that a lot of that success has been because we’ve had good equipment helping us along the way.”
Apex has had Genie lifts on site for five of the months it has been on the project. Other trades are still using some to hang sheathing, do painting, load supplies, and even move dumpsters. “They are versatile, reliable machines. We like having them around,” said Greene.
Lift & Access is part of the Catalyst Communications Network publication family.
