"Well that's one way to do it..."

That's a phrase I've been saying to myself a lot lately. Most the time I'm saying it with a measure of humor at whatever the situation is I'm encountering. Other times it might be getting said with a certain undertone of frustration.

The incinerator project has provided a certain amount of entertainment for myself (and probably others) as at times the bigger challenge in this project has been the language barrier and not the job itself. Simple tasks can turn into a game of telephone and you just have to be ok with the outcome and move on.

This past week has been a good example of that. Working with a translator from the hospital, I met with the head of maintenance to go over my plan for removal of this 6000 lb. incinerator. The main points of the meeting were to discuss how to disassemble the incinerator chimney and ultimately remove the incinerator from the building. It was a tight workspace and I wanted to take a very "slow and steady" approach to minimize damage to the building and any possibility of spilling leftover contents onto the ground. We have an old, very tired, Ford 555b backhoe that I had planned on using to do the bulk of the heavy lifting. A key point I tried to emphasize was to call me when they were ready to remove the incinerator because I wanted to use the loader bucket to hook to the incinerator, and then reverse the tractor to pull the incinerator out rather than use the backhoe and it's worn out controls.

So after all that context we can slap a heavy dose of reality on the plan and lets review how it all went.

Early in the week the chimney and secondary burn chamber were removed. A bit more of the roof was taken out than i had hoped but nothing that can't be repaired.

Incinerator....now with less chimney

The following day I was helping another one of the workers here and as we drove by the hospital we saw maintenance personnel working on the backhoe getting it fired up in all its tired, smoky glory. So that got our attention and we decided maybe we should detour over to the incinerator building to see what was going on.

We arrived in time to see they had a strap wrapped around the incinerator, and tied to the back of the backhoe bucket. So now comes the point where you have to decide if you are going to put a stop to the work and reset the equipment the way you had wanted to do it (without a translator around), or just roll with it and try and see what happens.

I opted for the second option.

This wasn't really a spot i liked being in but my main goal was to just make sure we removed the incinerator and not the surrounding wall/door frame.

Using the backhoe was going about as expected. There were several "stand back" moments as the backhoe operator did his best to "carefully" pull the incinerator out. After several minutes of excitement behold....it was out of the building.

Bonus points since it flipped upside down and dumped the contents of it on the ground.

So at the end of the week, did we get the incinerator out of the building? Yes we did! Was it how I had planned, or intended to do it? Not really, and that's OK! It still got done and it was certainly "...one way to do it". I expect this will be how a lot of things go for me as long as there is a language barrier between me and the guys. So maybe all of this is a reason i should spend the afternoon studying Spanish.

Keep after it!