Hello again,
Been a pretty busy couple of weeks for me this summer. I recently played in another golf tournament (I think you guys have heard enough about golf in these blogs!). It was a singles tournament so I didn’t have any backup like the other tournament I played. It didn’t go great for how I played, but it was still a lot of fun. Since all COVID restrictions are over pretty much over here in Alberta, it was really nice to socialize at the tournament and see some faces I haven’t seen in a longtime.
I also went camping with some university friends near Rocky Mountain House (near the mountains in between Edmonton and Calgary), which was about a 2 hour drive for me. We went swimming at Crimson lake and relaxed for the long weekend. It was really nice to enjoy the outdoors and see some friends for a few days.
Work has been great lately. Myself and my coworker have been working on a larger construction project. The transloading part of the mill needed a new scale to weigh trucks with incoming materials, as I described in the last blog. The project so far has gone on for just over a week.
In order for the government to certify a scale deck for use, you need to meet their structural and safety criteria. Around here, the ground freezes in the winter which makes the ground shift and can affect objects sitting on the surface. This meant in order to meet the structural and safety standards for a scale, we had to reinforce it from below the frost line. This allows the structure to stay still during the freeze/thaw cycles of the ground.
To combat this issue, we stacked specialized concrete blocks (reinforced with specific plastics and rebar) on top of one another, with the base resting below the frost line. On the top block was a flat surface, which allowed a spot for the scale deck to sit on top. This project made me feel like a kid again because it was almost like we were playing with Lego, except these Lego blocks weighed thousands of pounds. It was a slow and meticulous process to stack these blocks since the precision of each block could not be perfect.
We had 5 piers for this scale, and each pier had two individual block towers in it. Each of those towers had 6blocks and if you run the math… that’s a lot of blocks (there was 60 of them to be exact).
That’s enough math for today.
We backfilled the ground that was removed for the blocks and now the area is ready for the scale decks to be placed on top of the concrete. We won’t be doing that for a few weeks until the certification people can get out to Whitecourt.
Other than this project, it has been pretty steady with other small projects. I’ve been using CAD software to draw mechanical parts and piping isometrics. These drawings help give the people who create or install the equipment detailed fabrication and installation instructions. My skills have drastically improved since I got here.
With August here it’s starting to feel like the summer is coming to an end, but it also feels like it just started. I’m planning on getting in a couple more rounds of golf at home and seeing some of my friends before I head back to school this fall. I’ve only got 3 more weeks left and I want to take advantage of it before I dive into the mountain of schoolwork :(. Also looking forward to getting back into the swing of things and meeting some new faces.
My next blog is going to be a sort of tour here at Alberta Newsprint Company. I’m going to take some pictures and explain some of the processes involved with taking raw wood chips and turning them into newsprint. Then the last blog will be a bit of history and cool spots from the town I live in, how forestry has shaped the town, and what my plans are for the upcoming year.
Enjoy the rest of the summer while it’s here.
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