2 replies to this topic

[floridaskier]

A few questions about pulling the haul rope on a new lift:

How do they pull the rope up the whole line? Do they put the giant spool at the top and pull it down, or leave it at the bottom, or what? After that, how does it get strung through the terminal on a detachable, and hung up on the towers? This is the one part of lift construction that I haven't been able to figure out

[SuperRat]

All the new haul ropes I've been involved with were pulled from the bottom of the lift but I'm not sure if this is normal. It seems that locating the spool of new rope where it the splice will be done is easiest and the bottom of the lift may be better than the top.

The haul rope is pulled over the towers and through the terminals using a smaller diameter wire rope and a hydraulic winch. The small rope is light enough for a crew to pull it by hand down the line. A short bit of fiber rope is spliced onto the wire rope and everybody grabs on to that and pulls. At the towers one guy climbs up, hauls the line up and feeds it over the sheaves and back to the ground crew. Once the small rope is splice to the haul rope it is pulled through a winch and spooled up.

I've only pulled a few medium diameter haul ropes. Larger ropes certainly require other techniques.

[liftmech]

Pulling a rope on a detach isn't much different than on a fixed-grip. Where you have a guy climb every tower with the strawline, you also have several people who feed it through the terminal sheaves and around the bullwheel.

I've been in on pulls from the bottom of the lift, the top, and places in between. Usually it depends upon where you have road access and a flat spot for the spool.