Spent 4 hours trying to level a tower crane base pad

Last month I was setting up a crawler crane for a foundation job in Albany. The compacted gravel pad looked flat to my eye but the bubble level was just barely off. I figured I could fix it quick with some hand tamping and gravel sweep. Three hours later I was still messing with it, adding stone, tamping, checking, then taking stone back out. My foreman walked over and said the pad was fine after the first 20 minutes but I was overthinking it. He made me stop and we ran a string line across the whole pad which showed it was actually dead level. I wasted a whole morning because I didn't trust my tools and kept second guessing. Has anyone else spent too long chasing a tiny fraction of a degree on a crane pad?

2 comments

2 Comments

faith_schmidt7d ago

Man, the "dead level" part hits hard because that's exactly what you had the whole time. I've been there with a transit where I kept rechecking just to watch the bubble twitch the same way every time. It's like your brain convinces you that there's some hidden tilt even when the numbers say you're golden. The worst part is when you finally stop and realize you were chasing a tenth of a degree that doesn't matter for anything except your own sanity. A string line would have saved me about two hours on more than one pad for sure.

tarak176d ago

Wait, you seriously spent three hours chasing a bubble that was barely off and your foreman just let you keep going? That's brutal, I can't believe he didn't stop you sooner.