# Too high of a ceiling - lift advice - should I use a gas powered boom lift?



## JLNorthGA (Dec 29, 2011)

We are in the "sticks" - we don't have too many sources for rental equipment, so we take what is available.

Went over to the theatre last evening. I counted cinder blocks on the proscenium wall and compared the height of the proscenium opening to the wall height. As near I can figure (without actually measuring) - we have about 37' from the stage floor to the lowest "ribs" of our roof/ceiling.

The electricians don't want to work with scaffolding (can't say I blame them) and would prefer a lift.

The available scissors lift goes up to about 27' (platform level), which is obviously too short to be safe. They do have a gasoline powered boom lift which might fit inside the building. We do have a tall, wide garage door opening off of stage right. Shouldn't be a problem getting it in.

Should I run a gasoline powered lift inside the building?


----------



## Morte615 (Dec 29, 2011)

Inside of a building I would try to avoid gas powered if at all possible, if nothing else just for the fumes! There are electric lifts that go higher, I used one this last summer that was 46'. There are a few rental places that will rent anywhere in the US, and they will deliver also.
Sunbelt and United Rentals are two that I have used before. Also check out this Wikipedia page for some other national rental services.

Check and see if you have a A-1 or Universal rental shop nearby. Both of these will deliver but not sure how far from the shop they will travel.


----------



## Van (Dec 29, 2011)

I agree with Morte615. Avoid gas at all costs when working indoors. There units that have been changed over to Propane that are a lot more "indoors freindly ". When Installing Head blocks for Stagecraft we routinely employed a 44' scissor lift it was electric, about 4' wide and 8' long. You should have something available, as most rental places will truck their gear around to you if you book it early enough.


----------



## Footer (Dec 29, 2011)

I would also be concerned about your floor supporting it. Unless your stage is a solid slab poured straight to the ground, there is a good chance if its put on stage, its not going to be there long.


----------



## totalstage (Dec 29, 2011)

I assume the floor has already been a consideration since you don't want to go thru. If you have to use a gas one you can keep your bay door open and use some big fans to pull fumes out. I had to do that in a similar situation and it worked ok for short periods of time. Nobody else could be working in the place while we had the gas one in use.


----------



## avkid (Dec 29, 2011)

A JLG 400S weighs 12,650 lbs and tops out at 40ft.
If you have trade electricians that won't use scaffolding, it's time to find some new ones.


----------



## 65535 (Dec 29, 2011)

At over 6 tons I wouldn't put that lift on our stage it would end up in the pit if it went over the traps.


----------



## JLNorthGA (Dec 29, 2011)

Footer said:


> I would also be concerned about your floor supporting it. Unless your stage is a solid slab poured straight to the ground, there is a good chance if its put on stage, its not going to be there long.


 
Stage floor is 2" thick pine with a 1/4" tempered hardboard skin. The floor is laid on a concrete slab (at least 4" thick, probably more) with concrete ribs that stick out ~1' and are at least 8" wide. The concrete slabs (which I guess were tilt-up type) are on reinforced concrete beams. I'm not too worried except on the apron or above the traps.


----------



## JLNorthGA (Dec 29, 2011)

Morte615 said:


> Inside of a building I would try to avoid gas powered if at all possible, if nothing else just for the fumes! There are electric lifts that go higher, I used one this last summer that was 46'. There are a few rental places that will rent anywhere in the US, and they will deliver also.
> Sunbelt and United Rentals are two that I have used before. Also check out this Wikipedia page for some other national rental services.
> 
> Check and see if you have a A-1 or Universal rental shop nearby. Both of these will deliver but not sure how far from the shop they will travel.


 
Talked to Sunbelt. They aren't cheap, but they will deliver. $300 for delivery charge for a 32' Scissors lift - but hey, we are in the country.


----------



## MNicolai (Dec 29, 2011)

If you only need to have the lift on during movement and the work is generally kind of stationary, a gas lift actually isn't a terrible option -- when our theatre was under construction, they used the biggest scissor lift they could find and several boom lifts to put the building together, which frequently meant the lifts had to be used indoors (it helped that every hallway and overhead door was wide open during this phase).

Where you run into trouble is the weight. As a general rule of thumb, boom lifts weigh several tons, scissor lifts a lot less, vertical mast lifts even less, and scaffolding is the most lightweight. Boom lifts can be gas or electric, as can scissor lifts, but most scissor lifts used in theatre-environments will be electric (the gas ones generally have huge working platforms and weigh a ton anyway).

If they already own the boom lift and using it is cheap(ish), you may be able to get away with using it and all of the several tons of weight it comes with, provided it doesn't drive out on your stage floor and stays parked on some nice concrete in the wings.

We use two scissors here, a GL3246, and a GL2032. The 3246 weighs 5200lbs and generally our stage floor puts up with it. It's not uncommon to hear some lovely cracking and crunching of the CDX floor, but that's the nature of having a CDX floor. If it was a sprung floor, we'd probably not want to use the 3246 for fear of damaging the floor, but we hate our floor enough as it is, and the sooner we ruin it, the sooner we can justify the expense of installing that nice new floor we didn't get the first time around.

Rental rates -- that's about right. It's the labor and gas of four trips (to your facility to drop off, back from your facility with an empty trailer, to your facility with an empty trailer, back from your facility after pickup).

It's up to you and the contractors to determine which method to use, scaffolding or a lift. Scaffolding is cheaper, but depending on the scope of work, may not be practical. If they want _you_ to pay for the lift, they had better be able to list off a couple _good_ reasons, and "I don't like scaffolding", a good reason does not make.

Good reasons may be:
+ There are obstructions that make erecting scaffolding impractical
+ The nature of the work is spread across a large area and requires a lot of motion -- moving a full rig of scaffolding a couple dozen times will take them more time (which translates to a greater number of a man-hours and a higher labor fee for you)


----------



## JLNorthGA (Dec 29, 2011)

MNicolai said:


> Rental rates -- that's about right. It's the labor and gas of four trips (to your facility to drop off, back from your facility with an empty trailer, to your facility with an empty trailer, back from your facility after pickup).
> 
> It's up to you and the contractors to determine which method to use, scaffolding or a lift. Scaffolding is cheaper, but depending on the scope of work, may not be practical. If they want _you_ to pay for the lift, they had better be able to list off a couple _good_ reasons, and "I don't like scaffolding", a good reason does not make.
> 
> ...


 
Obstructions, I don't know about. The stage in back of the proscenium is about 24' deep and about 50' wide. There are the battens (electrical and other) - but they can be raised. The concrete ribs are maybe 38' up and the steel beams which suport the pulleys for the battens are maybe 37' up. They do have to go from one side of the stage to the other. As this is "high" work, it would require several sets of scaffolding to get the required stability - at least two and possibly three to be safe.


----------



## MNicolai (Dec 29, 2011)

JLNorthGA said:


> Obstructions, I don't know about. The stage in back of the proscenium is about 24' deep and about 50' wide. There are the battens (electrical and other) - but they can be raised. The concrete ribs are maybe 38' up and the steel beams which suport the pulleys for the battens are maybe 37' up. They do have to go from one side of the stage to the other. As this is "high" work, it would require several sets of scaffolding to get the required stability - at least two and possibly three to be safe.



Keep in mind that some boom lifts can extend out to as far as 75ft over and 130ft up. Depending on what's in their way up above, it's possible the lift can be parked on one side of the stage and still get them everywhere they need to get to. If you give them the dimensions and show them what they're competing with, they should be able to tell you if they can make that work or not with the lift that they have.


----------



## Morte615 (Dec 29, 2011)

JLNorthGA said:


> Talked to Sunbelt. They aren't cheap, but they will deliver. $300 for delivery charge for a 32' Scissors lift - but hey, we are in the country.


 
Just curious but will 32' be tall enough? In your original post you said to the shortest part of the ceiling was 37'. If that is where you are working then that will be enough (though I HATE to be operating anything at it's max like that) but if you have to go higher then it may not work. You can't put a ladder on a lift! (or rather should not!  )

Also just a note but over the summer I worked an Ice Show and we had a 46' boom lift (electric) that had to be driven over the stage to get to some lights and fly's. Now not only is this over the chillers encased in concrete, but also on an inch of ice! But we didn't have any issues and I can not think of any time that they have ever had any issues. And there has been an ice show in this theater for at least 10 seasons.


----------



## Van (Dec 29, 2011)

avkid said:


> A JLG 400S weighs 12,650 lbs and tops out at 40ft.
> If you have trade electricians that won't use scaffolding, it's time to find some new ones.


 
A jlg 4069LE tops out at 10,560 which is a mean 61 PSI bearing pressure at the tires. < I believe 3/4" CD play has a burst strength of 60psi when supported 16" o.c. but I'd have to get my book out to check. > 

I can more than understand Electricians not wanting to use Scaff at that height, Especially if they are going to moving across the stage constantly. When installing rigging we always use a scissor of Boom lift as we need to transport quite a bit of wight up and down. 
I might have missed it somewhere but if the original contractor didn't install the proper nuetrals why would you be paying for a rig to get new electricians up there?


----------



## JLNorthGA (Dec 29, 2011)

Van said:


> I can more than understand Electricians not wanting to use Scaff at that height, Especially if they are going to moving across the stage constantly. When installing rigging we always use a scissor of Boom lift as we need to transport quite a bit of wight up and down.
> I might have missed it somewhere but if the original contractor didn't install the proper nuetrals why would you be paying for a rig to get new electricians up there?



The building was built a long while back. They allowed shared neutrals at that time. ETC prefers that each circuit have its own neutral or have a larger gauge wire that is sufficient to carry the load. The original contractor has long since retired.


----------



## Van (Dec 29, 2011)

JLNorthGA said:


> The building was built a long while back. They allowed shared neutrals at that time. ETC prefers that each circuit have its own neutral or have a larger gauge wire that is sufficient to carry the load. The original contractor has long since retired.


 
AH ! ok, I'm understanding now. Hey I went to do an Engineering check-off on a system once. The electricians had run a common nuetral to every circuit FOH!


----------



## FatherMurphy (Dec 29, 2011)

The Bil-Jax 45XA is the farthest-reaching/lightest weight lift I've come across so far. JLG makes push-around basket lifts up to 45', but they can be a bit bouncy at full height, and resetting the outriggers every move is the usual PITA.

Scaff can be set up on wheels, even with multiple frames locked together to get the appropriate 4:1 base width. Depending on the work, one rolling tower can be as effective as a moving lift.

Some questions were raised about lift heights. It bears remembering that lifts are generally classified by height of the lift platform floor from the ground, so you can add a good 5' to the listed height to arrive at your working height.


----------



## avkid (Dec 30, 2011)

FatherMurphy said:


> TJLG makes push-around basket lifts up to 45', but they can be a bit bouncy at full height, and resetting the outriggers every move is the usual PITA.


 We have a JLG 30AM and I don't care for it, as the basket is merely pinned to the mast and not welded or bolted.
At or near full height it's real wiggly and unnerving, a boom or scissor at double the height is much less wobbly.
United Rentals keeps these in their regular stock, and they can be transported in a pickup truck if you have a fork truck.


----------



## stageguyjoe (Jan 4, 2012)

I would suggest a towable manlift like this one. If you have decent sized access to the space you should be able to get it in and at 4500 lbs it is easy on the floor. 

I've had Sunbelt deliver one through a door 5' above grade with no troubles. Once it was inside it was easy to position with 2 people.


----------

