DEFYING GRAVITY: KEEPING WORKERS WARM ON MIGHTY MAC
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Location
Michigan, US
Demand
Safe refueling on a suspension bridge
Solution
TransCube and gear pump
Response
Safe, uninterrupted energy
Defying gravity to preserve an infrastructure icon
When the Mackinac Bridge Authority awarded a contract to repaint the 5th longest suspension bridge in the world, the Department of Transport stipulated the supplier couldn’t leave a stationary fuel tank on the carriageway. The alternative was to manually carry 5-gallon tanks up staircases in each of the 500-foot towers of ‘Mighty Mac’. They needed a solution to keep their blasting and painting platform warm through winter conditions of minus 40 and gusts of 100mph. Our brief was to ensure fuel was pumped 300-feet up over the water, providing a consistent, uninterrupted energy supply throughout the three-year project.
Project Solution
Mobile tank feeds transportable storage
This was the first time in the bridge’s history its towers had been stripped to bare metal for repainting. So, the contractor knew it would require innovative ideas. Our solution was an H20TCG CAB mobile tank with 483-gallon capacity and highway approvals to travel the bridge.
Using a Gorman-Rupp high-pressure pump and 300ft of marine hose, it fed a 10TCG TransCube Global high up in the scaffold to ensure a ready fuel supply, keeping the workforce safe from the elements – and risks of drips, leaks or spills. These are stock items – and it took our engineering team no time to suggest a ready-made solution.
