Hartville, Wyoming

On Wednesday the 15th, we traveled to Hartville, Wyoming to perform a "Mobile Job".  This was actually a redo for us... we had stopped in Hartville on Monday the 13th, but a miscommunication through our dispatch sheet led to our leaving without cleaning their tanks. 

The issue was that the tanks are at the top of a hill that contained a turn too sharp for our trailer to make it up.  The solution: take the compressor, generator, trash pump, 50' length of hard pipe, 50' length of soft pipe, 25' of lay-flat pipe, hydradyne, hose floats, 400' umbilical, dive helmet, weight belt, dive gear, audio/video recording gear, rope bag, laptop, and dive manifold out of the trailer and tote them up to the tanks in the back of the truck. 

This made a simple job into a HUGE job.  The umbilical alone weighed over 200 pounds.  It took two trips with the truck to get all the gear up to the tanks.  Fortunately, both tanks were right next to each other, so once we had everything there it was a pretty quick clean and inspect.

We completed the job and drove five hours East to Ogallala, Nebraska, where we spent the evening before pushing onward to our next job.

Dave Johnston Power Plant, Wyoming

After we packed up and left Hanna, we picked up a job at the Dave Johnston Power Plant, which is one of the largest coal-fired plants in the Rockies.  It receives coal from mines in Wyoming's Powder River Basin, which is delivered on these LONG coal trains that we saw frequently.  The plant is located six miles East of Glenrock, Wy.

The job was pretty straight forward - the tank was a 140' tower nestled between several tall buildings at the plant.  We were required to watch a safety training video before entering the facility, but beyond that we were able to set up and complete the job pretty quickly.

Hanna, Wyoming

From the day we first left Billings (May 17th), I've been hearing about this HUGE job that we had coming up somewhere in Wyoming.  My team lead wasn't sure when or exactly where the job was, but we knew it was coming. 

That time came on June 7th just outside a small town called Hanna, Wyoming.  The nearest brand name motels to Hanna are in the town of Rawlins, 40 miles away.  After driving from Pinedale to Rawlins on the 6th, we drove to Hanna on the morning of the 7th and quickly realized that the scope of the job was larger than anyone had anticipated. 

The tank is a 20 MILLION gallon reservoir that the town of Hanna uses as a reserve water supply to fill their treatment tanks.  The tank is approximately 300 feet wide by 500 feet long (bigger than a football field), 20 feet deep with walls that angle down at about 45 degrees from the edges to the bottom.  The tank used to be cleaned very three years, but the rep from the water department told us that it hadn't been cleaned since 2002 or so.  The job had been bid at 18-20 days and we were budgeted 15 days to clean the tank.

Due to the tremendous amount of work, my team lead obtained authorization to stretch the rules a bit and put two divers in the water, leaving him as the sole tender and dive operator.  We commenced dive operations on the 7th and dove two divers for six hours per day. 

Our first day in the water was horrible.  I was the first diver in the water and discovered 6" of plant growth down the wall of the reservoir.  Once the plant material was touched with our hydradyne (the underwater vacuum), it kicked up turbidity (underwater dust) that was so thick that visibility went to zero.  Cleaning the walls was extremely difficult - the hydradyne left a small layer of sandy dust after cleaning off the plant material, which proved to be very slippery.  I found myself slipping down to the bottom of the reservoir despite my best efforts... and ascending and decending repeatedly in the water column is tough on the ears and very exhausting.  To further complicate things, the tank had an entire ecosystem complete with foot long salamanders, leeches, and all kinds of critters that lived inside the stuff we were vacuuming up. 

My coworker and I agreed that if all of our cleaning jobs were like this one that we would both have quit after the first day in Hanna. 

Fortunately, Day 2 was a little better for me.  I got into a rythm and was able to make some progress.  After three days of working two divers at six hours per day, we had cleaned about 75% of the first quadrant of the reservoir.

On Day 5, the utility determined that it was taking too long to clean the tank with divers and that they were going to drain the tank to perform cleaning and repair operations with it empty. 

That news was welcomed.  The process really was taking too long, so we packed up on Saturday the 11th and spent Sunday the 12th recharging in Rawlins. 

Here are my pictures from the tank in Hanna, as well as a few from Rawlins:

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. 

Jackson Hole, Wyoming

After leaving Shoshone, we drove four hours to Jackson Hole, Wyoming.  I don't recall if I've ever been to Jackson before, but it reminded me a lot of Sisters, Oregon.  It's a charming little tourist trap with stunning views of the Tieton Monutains just outside of town.  We enjoyed dinner at Bubba's Barbecue and checked into the Super 8 Motel in Jackson.  The next morning, my team lead fell ill and we took a sick day.  My other teammate and I drove out to see the Tetons, then back to the hotel to chillax for the day.  I headed downtown and wandered through the tourist shops and art galleries. 

Down one day, we worked overtime on the 4th to complete the work we needed to accomplish on the nearby tanks: one in Freedom, Wyoming and two in Star Valley Ranch (just a few miles from Freedom). 

Funny side story: The main drag in Freedom is called "State Line Road" - it is literally the state line between Wyoming and Idaho.  I was told by the water district guy that Mormons settled the area of Freedom back during the polygamy era of the chruch.  When the authorities would show up to raid the community, the husbands would send their multiple wives across the border into Idaho to avoid the police. 

Anyway, we completed work at three tanks on the 4th (which made for our longest day so far on this hitch). 

On the morning of the 5th, we headed the other direction to Teton Village (just outside Jackson) for an inspection of an older tank.  After completing that job, we drove 88 miles to a small town called Marbleton to work on two towers.  I'll save that for another post. 

My pictures from the Jackson Hole area:

Shoshone - My First Tower... or not

We left Grandview for a small town called Shohone in Idaho.  The job was a tower that we call a Coulee Top that was built in 1900.  I was excited to do my first tower, but also excited by the challenge of working on an older tank that doesn't have many of the features of newer tanks (less room to work, no ladder, etc). 

Alas, it didn't work out.  Cell phone companies lease space on towers for their cell receivers, which pose a serious radiation risk to men working in close proximity.  There was a miscommunication in the dispatch spec and those cell receivers weren't turned off when we arrived.  We called the cell phone company, but they need 24 hours notice to turn off their towers.

We headed East to Wyoming and left the Shoshone job to another day.

Grandview, Idaho

After we wrapped up at the state prison, we realized that our next job was back down by Mountain Home in a town called Grandview, so we headed back south to our Best Western and enjoyed another guacamole burger at Wingers (it's not on the menu, but Roni told us about it a few days earlier and it was worth coming back for). 

This morning, we drove the 30 miles or so to Grandview and cleaned their tank.  A little drama was created on this job - I was setting up gear on top of the tank and my teammates were directed to place the discharge hose from our trash (water) pump on a small hill that immediately began eroding away after we started working.  The construction guys were looking at the erosion during our cleaning, but nobody said anything to us.  It wasn't until AFTER we were done that they went ballistic on my team leader for the erosion damage. 

I suppose we could have used our telepathic skills to read their minds, but as they were the ones who told us to discharge where we did then didn't say anything about the erosion when it was occurring, I don't think I'm going to lose any sleep over this snafu. 

There was an I-beam cross in front of the tank that is probably viewable from most of Grandview.  I thought it was very cool... simple, yet respectful.  I love red states.