Thursday, June 16, 2011

Clearwater, Nebraska - My First Pedistal

After a long travel day that ended in Ogallala, Nebraska, we drove another five hours to the town of Clearwater, Nebraska to clean my first pedistal. 

A pedistal is probably the most difficult tank to set up.  The challenge lies in the shape of the tower... the base is hollow, with a tube leading up to the tank.  The tank itself is a donut shape around the tube.  Instead of having a ladder on the outside of the tank like a traditional tower, the pedistal requires the tender to climb up to about 110' inside the main column, open an access hatch to the outside (located at the base of the tank), rig up a line with a pully, work with the ground crew to feed all the necessary gear through the hatch, then pull all the gear up the remaining 30-40 feet to the top of the tank in order to set up for the dive.

This pedistal did not have a good place to attach the pully system at the base of the tank, so we had to feed everything for the job up the narrow tube in the center of the tower.  Doing so took quite a bit longer than it should have, but we completed the tower in about four hours... only an hour longer than a standard job. 













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