My crew came in this afternoon bearing huge grins... They had been measuring manhole depths along "Brewery Row" and apparently every single brewery?ÿ was rinsing their tanks today. All the manholes smelled like beer - a pleasant surprise!
From experience, if the odor is strong enough, it gets infused into your clothes (and hair and skin), and because the human olfactories get desensitized very quickly, you can swagger back to the office thinking you smell like your usual irresistible self, when actually you smell like ...
The only reason I can think of smiling about manholes is that I have not been required to open one since 1984.
The smell of beer would definitely be a big improvement over most of what gets washed down into lowly manholes.
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When I have to find out whats in a manhole I subcontract Ed Norton, Underground sewer expert.
I have to dip a manhole for a new sanitary connection this week.?ÿ It's the 2nd lowest before the plant, which treats the effluent for some 8K people and a bunch of businesses.?ÿ Not excited at the prospect, not at all.
- The best is when you pop that lid and it sounds like you??re standing over a class 4 rapids...
Deepest I've had to pop was for an as-built on a new line, that sucker was about half a foot shy of 40' deep. Very, very creepy standing there and staring down that deep hole. Creepiest part is knowing that if the fall didn't kill you, the gas and lack of oxygen would very quickly finish the job.
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Now, the?ÿworst one I've had to pop was about 2 bends upstream of the treatment plant. It was only about 18' deep, but it was a 36" line with flow about 3/4 of the way to the top of the pipe. I was using a fiberglass level rod for that one, and I thought it was gonna snap from the force of the current when I got it down to the flowline.
Found a pic of the 40' deep one:
Once upon a time a young and foolish party chief needed a depth on a MH on a 48" sanitary outfall that was running over 3/4 full.?ÿ The flow was enough to sound like the ocean roaring...even 30' up?ÿat the top.?ÿ Not having a rod long enough the young PC decided to tie a brick to the end of?ÿa fiberglass roll-up tape in a precise fashion and gauge the depth with a "dunking" procedure.
As soon as the brick hit the rocketing flow of influent it was a goner.?ÿ The tape began to sing like a fishing reel in the Gulf with a 200 pound marlin on the other end.?ÿ When the tape reached its limit (a mere few seconds)?ÿit was?ÿmore than?ÿthe poor young PC could do to hold on...the entire tape and reel went down with the "ship".?ÿ?ÿ A few days later the crew visited the WWTP and "most" of the tape had been cleaned from the bar screen.?ÿ The operators were very unkind with their laughter at the young PC's ignorance.?ÿ He declined the pieces the operators had saved for him.
The young PC learned a lesson that day.?ÿ It also took a good week to heal?ÿthe burns on my hands caused by the spinning tape reel.... ??ÿ
Mr Cash, you have a "knack" for story telling.
If I were to tell it, it would not be so charming...
Good Job
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N
Once upon a time a young and foolish party chief needed a depth on a MH on a 48" sanitary outfall that was running over 3/4 full.?ÿ The flow was enough to sound like the ocean roaring...even 30' up?ÿat the top.?ÿ Not having a rod long enough....
Similar situation - not so deep - lowered the rod until it just touched the water- the thing bent almost to the point of breaking - I managed to withdraw in the nick of time.?ÿ One more inch and it would surely have snapped the rod. And if I'd been standing on the downstream side of the lid the sudden reaction might have sucked me into the drink.?ÿ ?ÿ
Thank you Nate.?ÿ You're not the first person that has commented on my verbosity...although yours is?ÿone the few that was positive.
Being able to laugh at yourself is a important necessity.?ÿ I learned this years ago as I was rolling down the road in a Suburban survey chariot with an entire crew in tow.?ÿ I decided to join the ongoing conversation and one of the guys in the back said, "Oh gawd, he's gonna start tellin' stupid stories again".
That was a lot funnier than the story I was going to tell.
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Being able to laugh at yourself is an important necessity.
A TRUE STATEMENT.?ÿ I've embarrassed myself on more that one occasion.
It wasn't a sanitary sewer, but a storm sewer.?ÿ WAY back when I was a "junior rodman" I had a party chief that had quite a temper.?ÿ Luckily he would blow up and five minutes later it was all over and forgotten?ÿ We were staking curb in a cul-de-sac.?ÿ The party chief was writing in the field book while standing next to a catch basin that had (as yet) no lid in place.?ÿ In those days we didn't use Gammon reels just loop the string around your neck while walking.?ÿ The party chief had let his string lay on the ground, unknown to him it was under one foot while standing on it with the other.?ÿ When he tried to take a step the string tripped him and he went head first down the catch basin.?ÿ We went running up just as he crawled out, threw the plumb bob about a quarter mile down the road and turned the air blue with profanity.?ÿ We all just about fell down laughing (once we were sure he wasn't hurt) and that made matters WORSE.?ÿ Soon he realized how funny it must have looked and laughed with us. 45 years later he can still laugh about it.
Andy
Since we're recounting the past... My first crew chief must have been Andy's Chief's twin brother. This guy would fly off the handle at the slightest thing - start jumping up and down and screaming and swearing and hurling insults like there was no tomorrow (I will say that he was one hell of a good surveyor and I am exceedingly fortunate to have been able to put up with his tantrums and learn something). in any event, one day we were attempting to measure a number features inside a sanitary sewer lift station holding vault. I have no idea why we couldn't have waited until it was pumped out, but Chief had us feeling around inside it with the level rod and describing what we thought it looked like inside. After about 10 minutes of failure Chief lost it. You would have thought that he expected us to have PHD's in describing invisible things lurking in 15 feet of sewage. After describing ALL our inadequacies and our family linage he couldn't figure out what else to do. I still remember the look in his eye as he screamed and threw down the 3-ring binder full of field notes from the last month as hard as he could. The rings opened as it bounced into the air, and about half the sheets started blowing away. He screamed "Get those notes" as the binder with the remaining sheets went right you know where. As I dashed for the notes blowing away I saw out of the corner of my eye that he was going headfirst into the vault. By the time I began to realize what was occurring he came shooting right out, dripping wet from head to toe, with the binder firmly clenched. After firing off another salvo of profanity, we drove him home standing on the rear bumper. He told us to leave the dry sheets under a brick on his porch and take the rest of the day off. The next morning the sheets in the binder had been restored and not a word was ever said about the whole affair. I always admired him for his actions, even though I still think it was one of the stupidest things I have ever seen...
Jim,
One of my old party chiefs had a similar disposition.?ÿ While x-sectioning an old farm pond he told me to "just get in there and give us some shots, it can't be anymore than waist deep".?ÿ About the third shot I slipped off a ledge an wound up in water over my head.?ÿ I was thrashing about (thought I was dying) and the only thing keeping me afloat was the level rod pushing into the silt on the bottom of the pond.?ÿ While I'm dying I hear him yell at me to "plumb the rod" so they could go ahead and get a shot....
I'm thinking your PC that fell in the lift station sump should have took the time to feel around and see if he could tell what was down there..as long as he was already in there. ??ÿ
I can't remember the last time I did a measure-down in a sanitary sewer manhole, but it has been quite a while now. I do not miss the task one iota.
A number of years ago my former supervisor told me a story where they recovered some ancient field notes on a manhole in the city of Renton, Washington, that was 39.6 feet deep. The notes said "This manhole is SO deep, I swore I saw the head of Satan!".
One day I will invent something brilliant to measure manhole inverts and become a thousandaire.
"This manhole is SO deep, I swore I saw the head of Satan!".
I popped one like that when I was first starting out.?ÿ It was a cold winter morning and down stream of a restaurant getting ready to serve lunch and apparently they were using a ton of hot water.?ÿ Steam/smoke rolled out when we pulled the lid and it took several minutes for it to cool off enough for the steam to dissipate so that we could see the invert.?ÿ Our 25' box tape didn't stand a prayer so we used flagging to strap a rebar to the 100' rag tape so it sat on the hook and extended up the tape.?ÿ That gave us enough weight that we could tell when it just barely touched the invert.?ÿ The crew chief said it was the flow that grabbed and pulled on the tape but I always thought I caught a glimpse of Ole Scratch and bit of fire as I kicked the lid shut. ??ÿ
Edit:?ÿ Hell smells like fire and brimstone, rancid shi*, and garlic......who knew?
I wouldn't mind swimming in beer cause I'm usually skimming hypodermic needles and garbage off the surface before getting in storm drains. Lucky for me we don't have to get into the sanitary manholes very often. When we do close up your sleeves, cuffs, and collars good so the roaches can only attack at the surface... ?ÿ ?ÿ ?ÿ
Good stories!
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One day I will invent something brilliant to measure manhole inverts and become a thousandaire.
Its called a Pipe-Mic...?ÿ