Project of the Month - December 2

Spider boom lift (I wrote about in this article) were such a disappointment!

They look so cool on photos and even have a remote control. I so much looked forward to this weekend so I can try them at BMW Kings Cross project. What a waist of time!

• It takes an hour to set up the lift up in each position (with experience you may cut this in half). Lift doesn’t start until perfectly leveled & has legs wide enough to keep the balance. Indicators are very poor. So you just keep trying different levels or moving it a bit for a different leg position until the lift starts.

• You not always can make it work where you need it for the best access. You probably could eventually. But I quit after 1 hour!
  

• The crane only turns 180º, then stops. No indicator shows how far it can turn each way until the stop point. Few times we moved and set up the lift, got in the basket and found that it wouldn’t turn a little bit to right-way to reach the place we need. We didn’t have enough space to turn it left-way 180º. We have to get out, dismantle the lift, turn the base 180º and set up the lift again. 2 hours for 2 people gone, no work done…
  

• The basket is too small for 2 people working effisiantly. This affects the cost of job – you pay a fortune to create a workplace for only 1 person (and lots of time wasted moving the lift, not getting the gob done).
  

• The high hire cost makes spider lifts unfeasible for most projects. For the fraction of the price in hire and labour I could have built a scaffold, and have few people working on it (not just one). I would get the job done faster and cheaper.

I would only use a spider lift in high courtyard-like area, were I need a machine lighter then an ordinary boom lift, and were it can reach most of the areas from the same spot, so I do not have to move the lift.