KEEPING COSTS DOWN IN HIGH PLACES - THE STEEPLEJACK OPTION
…And the Secret Hands on Method for Making Sure That the Work Gets Done.
By John M. Corbett

BO'S'N'S CHAIR. Steeplejack displays the old school mentality: no OSHA fall protection. Don't try this.

Forbidding, archaic, daunting in scale, the high places of the built environment, like any extreme habitat, have produced a community of building and restoration specialists who have filled this niche. These artisans, the steeplejacks, have made this world truly their own by developing minimalist rigging solutions which save costs but which tend to limit participation by building professionals and other trades. The steeplejacks are general contractors who perform most operations with their own forces, often with only such oversight as the owner's representative is able and willing to furnish from a distance. Their participation can produce brilliant solutions at significant savings or offer a deft and affordable way for the building stewards to pass along problems to another generation while maintaining the appearance of diligence. Whatever the object, it will be more surely attained by understanding how this lofty environment shapes and limits the effectiveness of the steeplejack's method.

JUST ONE PIECE. (Waterbury, CT) A preassembled gothic sandstone pier is installed in about an hour.

To assure a successful project, the owner's representatives must be sure that the conditions that the steeplejacks find when they put their hand to the work are in fact those that they were hired to address. This is a difficult task with any restoration environment, let alone one so remote. The steeples, towers, lighthouses and smokestacks reaching up out of the built environment are subject to an unfortunate accumulation of conditions which cause their needs to be routinely misunderstood and maintenance to be perennially deferred:

1. First among these is their obvious inaccessibility. Out of site is out of mind and often out of the maintenance budget. Inspections become less frequent and the structures that support inspections, the access ladders, catwalks and hatchways, become neglected, unsafe and choked with bird droppings until these areas become dangerous and forbidden.
2. Second among these conditions is their archaic function. They have low priority because the bells, clocks, weathervanes and signal lamps of a previous era are no longer relied upon to mark our place the world. Without a committed constituency, funds for their maintenance are often resented for being wasted on the frivolous architectural vanity of a departed generation.
3. Third among these conditions is the archaic nature of the building technologies, materials and systems that form these structures. Weathervanes, stone carvings, bell systems, ironwork and millwork can all present materials and technologies that are obsolete or nearly unavailable.
4. Fourth among these conditions is the unexpectedly large scale of these structures, a design measure calculated to read effectively at a distance. A weathervane appearing to be three feet long may measure out at seven feet and weigh 500 pounds. A wood molding which seems to be a manageable 4 or 5 inches may prove to be 8 or 10 inches in width. These incremental dimensional increases lead to surprising geometric cost increases that can thoroughly disrupt budget calculations.
5. Fifth among these adverse conditions is architectural complexity. From the designer's standpoint, a function of vertical architecture is to summarize and elaborate on the forms established by the main structure. This produces a level of decorative detail that makes operations typically more labor intensive and production efficiencies rare.
6. Sixth among these conditions is their unrelieved exposure to the elements without the protection that surrounding obstructions may offer to the balance of the main structure. Required to furnish more service with less maintenance, exposed elements and materials with equivalent counterparts in the lower structure will generally be found to be in much worse condition.

FLYING SCAFFOLDS. (Amherst, MA) The steeplejacks are kept supplied with cut and formed material from the ground, via an ordinary galvanized garbage can on a capstan hoist.

Taken all together, these six conditions form a perfect storm well suited to overwhelm budgets and to infect the most well meaning of plans with wishful thinking. To engage the steeplejack in producing reliable work, the building's stewards must have a realistic conditions survey, project specification and budget and must understand that the problem didn't happen yesterday and won't be fixed tomorrow. To the steeplejacks, at least, these project conditions are far from unexpected and every experienced firm has had to make allowance for them in their mission and business plan.

The steeplejacks' value proposition is that money that can be saved by conducting operations from a minimal scaffolding bearing on the structure itself rather than being built up or free standing. In settings which are inaccessible to a crane or which can't support or won't allow built up scaffolding, this rigging method may be the only method of access available. In addition, it doesn't present the encumbrance or the liability that built up scaffolding does, offering no access to vandals, intruders and the curious. Nor will it damage planted areas, paved areas and underground utilities like a crane can. The steeplejacks employ various suspended scaffolds, fixed scaffolds (also called "flying" scaffolds or "crowsnests") and, most distinctively, the bo's'n's chair. The "chair" is a rope sling with a plywood seat suspended from a 3 part rope falls which offers the operator access along the length of the falls and a considerable measure of lateral mobility. This platform is ideal for performing light operations that don't require the artisan to have his feet set beneath him such as painting, pointing or shingling. These rigging methods can be made OSHA compliant by the installation of approved fall protection as a separate, fully redundant system. Fall protection is nice, but on experienced crews, safety and efficiency are further underwritten by a commitment to effective communication, good housekeeping and close teamwork. Light rigging is only part of an overall innovative approach to the work which can benefit quality and schedules as well as cost.

CROW'S NEST. (Provincetown, MA) Accessible from the interior, this scaffold furnished a stable inspection platform for the owner's representative.

Flying scaffolds can save money and furnish work areas for significant projects, as work on a 160' Amherst, Massachusetts church spire showed. Here, 9 tons (22 squares) of green and purple Vermont roofing slate were installed over a new plywood deck. The work was accomplished from a series of fixed scaffolds reinstalled upward as the work was completed at each level. These scaffolds were 5' wide, stable and capable of supporting slate, tools and personnel. Adapted from industrial chimney scaffolds, they are not attached through the wall but are rather attached to a flexible steel compression band cinched around the spire. In this case, the compression band rode safely over the new brittle slate on newly installed hip boards, 2 by 4 inches tall, which provided the nailage for new copper hip flashings. These hip flashings were installed from chairs after the scaffolds were removed. Whether in a chair or on the scaffold, the steeplejacks "in the air" were tended from a work area on the ground from which they were supplied plywood, felt, slate and copper, cut and formed to order. Productivity has increased since the introduction of radio communication to the work site, making it easier for crew members to be heard over distance, traffic and the wind. While the volume of work in the Amherst spire was more efficiently accomplished from the scaffold, the bo's'n's chair can be a very efficient platform for smaller slate installations and scattered or incidental repairs. By being efficiently supported from a ground fabrication area, via a hoist, the reliability of work completed from any platform can be more easily maintained.

BUILT TO SCALE. The mass of a 200' tall steeple is made apparent by the introduction of the human form.

Conditions and specifications for the Amherst spire project were easily established once the existing roofing slate and decking were examined closely. Complete replacement is a rather straightforward specification to make and to manage. Actually, the steeplejacks had originally assured the owners that the slate was repairable but once the building was rigged, they discovered the slate to be of a different variety and quality than they had originally assumed from a distance. Wishful thinking can affect even the steeplejacks. By staying focused on developing a reliable specification, however, the building's stewards finally established a durable solution for the building conditions.

Another strategy, that of off site fabrication of completely assembled building components, has the advantages of minimizing on site activity and of allowing the building's stewards to inspect the work closely on the ground before it is set into place. There are also production and scheduling advantages in that the work is produced in a shop environment, under ideal conditions. After a tornado touched down and swept away three 5 ton, 20 foot tall, sandstone finial piers perched 120' above the sidewalk in Waterbury, Connecticut, it was clear that they were gone and had to be replaced. The owner was concerned about scaffolding costs since the site had to be accessed once to prepare the pier bases and produce drawings for the fabricators from the remaining pier and then a second time 8 months later for the installation. That would require leaving scaffolding to stand for 8 months on a busy urban corner or to incur charges for delivering, erecting and dismantling it twice. The steeplejacks proposed to execute all these operations from bo's'n's chairs if the stonework were to be delivered preassembled in as large a component as a big crane could pick. This was accepted. All the work was set in a single day during which, as it happened, a gale blew with 50 mile gusts. The steeplejacks had to tie themselves to the structure and each other to keep from blowing away, but the work itself set relatively steady due to its great weight and the stability of the crane.

SHOP REPAIRS. This reproduction steeple was shipped 200 miles for installation.

More typically, restoration projects are not so straightforward, calling for unit restoration and replacement, "as necessary", or a similar such unavoidable specification. In such cases, how can the building's stewards verify that the conditions are accurately established and that the work is executed as specified? On occasions when the steeplejacks get issued a long punch list for a readily inspectable portion of the project, with no mention of the less accessible portions, they may suspect that the owner's representatives are compensating for the oversight. Such displays may help build a more plausible paper trail but do nothing to insure the soundness of the work. A flashing and millwork restoration project at an 1850's Greek Revival wood frame "wedding cake" steeple in Provincetown, Massachusetts shows a more effective procedure. At the beginning of the project, the steeplejacks rigged the structure with bo's'n's chairs and documented conditions at every level, keyed to four full elevations. Specifications for the work were developed on the basis of this document. Since the wedding cake form tends to concentrate the watercatches at the bottom of each stage, the many polygonal roof ledges and damaged millwork which required replacement were clustered here. Flying scaffolds were built for the work just below these levels where they also functioned as stable inspection platforms. The owner's representative was furnished with OSHA fall protection and a dedicated escort during his monthly inspections of the completed work. When he had a question about work in an area remote from the scaffold, he took a short trip in the chair. There is often only one way to confirm that work has been completed as specified and that is to inspect it closely enough so that it can be touched. The steeplejack's option is so well suited to this environment that it is worthwhile to develop the inspection procedures necessary to adequately support them in furnishing reliable, durable work.

STEEPLEJACK SPECIALISTS

Yankee Steeplejack Co., Inc., Steeplejacks and Church Restoration, New England.

Jack Hassler Company, Steeplejacks Specializing in Historic Restoration, Philadelphia and Environs.

Advance Construction and Steeplejack Corp., Steeplejacks. Restoration and Waterproofing of Historic Structures. NY, MA and CT.

J and D Painting and Restoration, Steeplejacks, and Church Restorations, Western New England and New York.

Eagle Painting and Restoration Services, Steeplejacks Based in Nashville, Tennessee and Serving the South.

Steeplejacks of America, Steeplejacks, Steeple Repair and Tower Restoration Nationwide.