Here is a job I did for McDonald Miller. Located South of Seattle in Tukwila, Washington. It as a lot of large cast iron no-hub piping. The crew I had couldn't lift very much so I had them running copper and I was doing the cast iron. Also doing all of the layout and the material ordering. For some reason they designed this with a lot of roof decking, all those cutaways on the side were decks you could walk out on. Each deck had at least two drains. Those drains tied together as stacks near the stairs.
The funny thing is, the stairs between the first and the second floor were drawn to be only four feet high. Just a little tough to walk upright in I figured. This building was a pre-stressed cable pour, with the tie-ins at the stair wells. If they had framed and poured without fixing the plans, I can't even imagine the loss they would have incurred doing a fix to it. I talked to the framers and told them of the mistake, telling them they should send the plans back and have them change it. Two days later they should me the fix. OMG, it was even worse. I took a pen and marked the wall that could stay, and the wall that needed moving. A day later they showed me the next fix. This one looked okay to me. They asked me if they could start building out the second floor, and I gave them the thumbs up.
8" cast iron drain lines. Trust me, these are heavy when you're installing them on a ladder. The anchors in the ceilings I was able to install before the pour.
Thanksgiving weekend.
We came back on Monday and there were police on hand. In the main lobby there was a body hanging from a rope. They left him hanging there until the afternoon while they looked at evidence. It was something that you would always remember. Non of us that had been there and seen him dangling from a rope would ever store material there. Ever. Months later, other trades came on the job and they were happy to have this wonderful location to store their supplies. The ones that where there that Monday avoided the area.
The following day, the brother and the sister of the man who died came and talked to us, asking questions. We had our questions too. He was having hard times and it being a holiday weekend, he must have seen the structure from the road and drove to it. It was really sad talking to his siblings realizing that they were very much like my family. This sadness could happen to anybody.
This must be the parking garage seen from above in the main building.
As slow as our progress was on the main building, the parking garage for some reason flew together. We did the groundwork so fast that the general contractor had no idea it had been done. It was all inspected and backfilled and he had never even looked at it. His job trailer was right beside it.
Some of the pipe for the garage was 12" in diameter.
If you've ever worked on a tall building, it's a little interesting to be on the decking doing your layout and feeling water dropping on your neck, and looking up to see a pallet of pipe coming down from the sky right where you are working. You quickly move out of the way.
Now in Seattle, you see cranes everywhere you look. This was one large building that I was able to plumb from the ground up.
