CK5
Register an account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members.
OSHA's top 3 causes of accidental death in the "workplace" are:

1) Falls
2) Struck By and Caught In/Between
3) Electrocution

Falls are the number one killer and there are plenty of fatalities each year from falls at heights as low as 4'.

Glad you are still with us. Hope you get better soon Greg.



Yep. It doesnt take height to damage yourself.

Tell my permanently damaged shoulder I dislocated when I toppled off a 5' concrete form.
 
They didn't let me stay a single night... Here's your cast, here's your prescriptions....BYE!

Not that I really mind. I'd rather sleep in my own bed/chair any day.

By this time they had you for ten grand and didn't have to babysit you
 
Wow, I'm late to the effing party again!

Glad this didn't turn out as bas as it could have.

Heal fast, and get back to fabbin!

Not as late as I am. ;)


Lol...Kelly was confused in the ER when I kept telling her "Take pictures! I'll never live it down otherwise..." :haha: that was my contingency plan. :)

Glad to see your humor is working well. That does a lot to restore hope to a crummy situation. :waytogo:
 
Nice new location you got there. :waytogo::haha:

What's on today's schedule? Shoveling snow off the roof?
 
Nice new location you got there. :waytogo::haha:

What's on today's schedule? Shoveling snow off the roof?


Nothing like that, Concrete Brother! :haha:

There's a bulb out in our mud room but I don't really feel like climbing on even the smallest step stool right now.

I might get out in the garage and muddle around a little bit... Whatever I can accomplish with my arm in a sling is sure to be minimal, but maybe some small Tupperware organizing, etc.

:thinking:

-G
 
Time to work on the tougher smaller tasks for a bit?
 
I really need to start doing more research on building a 3 link, so looks like i'll be re-reading your whole thread today. :deal: :D
Glad you're doing better, hopefully you find something to do today to cure your restlessness
 
I was gonna go for "I thought you were in the granite state, not the concrete state", but that seemed stone cold inappropriate.

-- A


Your puns are as bad as Paddy O'Concrete....


Irish they were funnier.... But the laughter would probably just make my arm hurt anyway


-G
 
2016.01.15 - UPDATE! - !!! BROKEN BONES & DELAYS....!!!!


By now everyone knows that I took a major tumble in the garage back on Sunday night (1/3).

As I reflect back on the entire event, it's hard not to feel EXTREMELY lucky that I only ended up with a broken arm, eye socket and a concussion. Falling from 8 feet up onto a concrete floor is no joke, and I could have ended up lying there all night with a broken neck, or bleeding internally, etc. All things considered, I am very grateful that I'm already on the road to recovery and won't be any weirder or uglier than I was prior to this accident. :D

In any case, I'll at least give you the whole story now since I can't really do much yet with only one-arm and it's pretty clear that I'm probably another couple of weeks away from making any meaningful progress in the garage (either on the workspace itself or the truck build).

So..... there I was, organizing and getting myself psyched-up for a cold winter in the garage. My game plan was pretty simple: I had already done all the ceiling painting to get everything a gleaming white again, and replaced EVERY bulb in the shop with a new 6500K florescent so that I had lots of "pure white" brightness lighting the way. :waytogo: The second phase of my shop rework was getting rid of all non-essential stuff that was piled into cardboard boxes, and putting the "good stuff" into new Hefty 72Qt bins with locking lids. This would allow me to see what was inside, and also keep rodents and metal dust from contaminating the contents.

IMG_8197.jpg



They stack well too, so I would be able to consolidate my parts into a smaller amount of space, and close-off some of the attic areas that are hard to heat and insulate anyway.

I had a design that allowed me to preserve the utility of the open area above the truck itself and the mezzanine areas on the perimeter of that space for storage. The unvented roof had been filled with R-30 batts of fiberglass which worked OK in the winter, but in the summer months, they got horribly wet with condensation and started getting moldy and gross. I knew that I was going to be fighting moisture issues if I didn't properly vent the roof deck, so I came up with a new plan to retrofit some venting and still get a lot of R-value up into the roof for the winter.

IMG_8204.jpg



This rigid foam is foil-backed on both sides which helps to reflect unwanted heat out, and/or reflect wanted heating or cooling back into the space. Each 2" piece is R-12 and my joists are 2x8" (7.25" actual thickness). So by stuffing each bay with 2 pieces and aligning them to the face of the joist, I get R-24 insulation value AND a nice airspace between the foam sheets and the underside of the roof deck. When I finally cut holes in the soffits that will allow cool air to be drawn up under the roof as the hot air is vented out at the ridge-vent area. This also allows me to reserve the option to run a 3rd layer of foam sheeting (for a total of R-36) across all the joists to really close up gaps and control hot vs cold air and condensation. :thinking:

IMG_8215.jpg



The process of hand-fitting all of those ~14.5" strips of foam into each cavity was tedious work.... and I had to get them ALL the way down to the soffit area tightly for best effect. I was climbing up and down an aluminum 8' ladder all day with insulation and by around 10:30PM on Sunday night I'm sure my body was getting pretty wiped-out.... and that's when I missed my step to the ladder and fell hard.

This photo shows the ladder I was using, and the relative height of that mezzanine area to the floor below.

IMG_8346.jpg



The scary part was not really knowing how long I was laying there in a heap before I finally woke up and went inside. If I had been unconscious for another 30 minutes, my wife would have already been in bed and with my deliriousness I probably would have just tried to go to bed and "sleep it off".... fortunately, she took one look at that huge lump on my head and my swollen arm and knew that I needed to get to the emergency room ASAP.

We basically spent the rest of the night and early morning in the ER. And when we got back home the truck was still sitting outside... nobody could deal with it for a couple of days so it just sat. Fortunately the weather was dry so it didn't end up being a problem. I think it finally went back into the garage on Tuesday night and I did the best I could with my arm in a cast to clean up the garage so Kelly could at least park on her side of the garage again....

It was nice to finally get rid of that stupid, useless support post and massive lateral beam... I'm going to enjoy not bumping my head on that thing anymore!

IMG_8363.jpg



The first couple of days were the hardest. I took my oxycodone EVERY 6 hours, and was counting down the seconds between doses. It gave me really weird dreams / hallucinations so I was glad when the pain was manageable enough that I could stop taking it...

I did a lot of sleeping each day and wasn't supposed to focus my eyes on TV or books or iPads so that my brain could just relax and heal the concussion... but I found a few minutes here-and-there to take some self-deprecating "selfies" so that I could post them on CK5 when the time was right.

Left arm cast setup...
IMG_8362.jpg


Broken Radius (near socket)... fortunately stayed in place so I didn't need a fiberglass cast...
IMG_8381.jpg


Broken Eye socket... just a bunch of weird bruising above and all around the eye.

IMG_8372.png




As of today, the head feels pretty good. I ended up WAAAAY behind at work, so I've been struggling to catch up on everything and by the time I get home I'm pretty wiped out. Most nights I'm still in bed by 9PM. The arm is the worst part of the recovery at this point. It doesn't move much without pain, and I really can't type that well yet and DEFINITELY can't lift any weight with it. :yikes:

I guess 2016 is starting out at a pretty low point for me, but being the optimist I am .....there's nowhere to go from here but UP!!! :waytogo:



-G
 

Latest Posts

Top Bottom