Things on the construction site were delayed a little by the municipality. They took their time giving us a construction license, and we also had some difficulty with the electric company getting a connection. Today, thinks are finally moving again, and to kick it off we got a very special delivery!
A crane! Ready to do work for me!
Ever since I was a child, I've always loved cranes. My favorite cranes are the mobile variety... The kind you can just drive up on a whim and lift anything you see.
For me, cranes have a slightly magical superhero quality to them, but I also like to imagine the havoc you could reap if you had a really big one and a mind for mischief. I know that the world of physics places real limits on what cranes can do, but in my childhood imagination, limits don't matter.
Want to rob a bank? Why bother showing up with a gun when you can drive up with a crane and take the whole building?
Make me mad? No problem, I'll just put your car on your house... Make me REALLY mad? OK, then I put your house on your car!
Anyway, I have endless fantasies about how great it would be if I just had a crane at my disposal, and today, my dream became a reality! Thanks to the wonderfully named company 'RENTAGRU' ('grua' is Portuguese for crane... get it? 'RENT-A-GRU'... clever right?)
Rent me
When our contractor told us he would be employing a crane, we had no idea that he meant to get the biggest one he could fit in the space. Literally, look at the picture below. This is the space in the back of our garden, it's a small, but by no means tiny area... It's about the size of a large single car garage, or (as shown in the picture) one very large crane foot!
Crane foot
After they attached the first segment of the crane tower to the crane foot - there are probably more technical names for this stuff, but somehow I don't think there should be. Anyway, after they put the crane tower on the crane foot, they piled loads of concrete anchors on it, and it looked like this. For reference, the wall in the back is about 3 meters high (almost 10 ft).
Crane foot under anchors with crane tower protruding.
By any measure, this is a big crane. It's bigger then the house we are re-building!
It seems a bit silly to have such a giant thing. I feel almost ashamed, as if it's somehow 'unjust'... How can I have so much crane when so many poor sad people have so little? I feel guilty, but I don't care. I love my crane! So much so that I spent the whole day just watching them put it together. I even made some videos:
