Marbleton, Wyoming - My First Tower (for real!)

On the afternoon of the 5th, we drove to Marbleton, Wyoming and set up to clean my first tower.

Setting up a tower is a bit different... instead of everyone grabbing gear and setting up at the tank, one man on the team (the tender - me) climbs up to the catwalk of the tower (120' up) and sets up a pully system.  The two men still on the ground start using the pully system to send up all of the gear to the catwalk level. 

Once everything is on the catwalk level, the diver climbs up to the catwalk and the tender climbs up to to the top of the tank (another 20' or so).  They then work together to move all of the gear to the top of the tank - the tender throws down a rope to the diver, who attaches it to the gear, and the tender pulls it up the side of the tank and ties it off so it doesn't fall back down. 

This process took longer than it should have because I'm new and had a bit of a challenge figuring out where to put everything, but we got it done. 

With everything in place at the top of the tank, the diver dresses out in his dive gear on the catwalk level, then climbs up to the top of the tank and enters the tank to clean and inspect. 

The other major difference between a tower and an on-grade or below-grade tank is that with the on or below-grade tanks we use a 3" trash pump to vacuum out debris in the tank.  With a tower, we let gravity do the work.  While the diver is getting dressed out, the tender uses a small submersible pump to fill the 150' or so of 3" hard pipe from the top of the tank to ground level with water (the pipe has a valve closing it off at the bottom).  Once the hard pipe is full, the tender connects it to the soft pipe that is used in the tank for the cleaning, the valve is opened at ground level, and a syphon effect creates enough suction to vacuum out the tank.  Pretty slick if you ask me. 

There was a second tower that we were supposed to clean and inspect in Marbleton, but there wasn't a catwalk on the tank which means that everything would have needed to be staged and handled while hanging from the ladder.  My lead said that if he had three experienced guys on the team that they *might* have attempted such a feat, but with two newer guys he decided that it was just too dangerous.  So... only the one tower for me. 

Click on this picture to see my photos from the tower.