With all the 200, 400, 800, and 1200 amp wiring installed, the pace of the work has thankfully slowed somewhat for me.

Steven, Brian, Bruce and Philip began working on the wiring for lights and outlets (both 110v and 220v) in the new lab, just off the new transmitter hall.  This is the type of wiring they do regularly at home, and requires very little input from me.  It is neat to see how quickly these cousins work together to get the job done.

Paul continued to work in the power room installing a ceiling light and outlets.  By afternoon, we were able to back-feed the 800 amp panel which allowed him to use a vacuum cleaner to clean out all the concrete dust and metal shavings from the bottoms of all the panels and from the floor.  He installed all the panel covers, except the one for the 1,200 amp breaker panel.  We still need to design and wire the circuit for the shunt trip to be used for an emergency shutdown button to be installed inside the transmitter hall.

“Uncle’ Jim and Jake continued assembling the long copper lines by now connecting them to the condensing units.  Jim discovered the reason for the elbows not fitting onto the tubing easily.  The tubing is slightly oval.  By squeezing the larger diameter of the oval, the fittings slide on much easier.

Mid-morning, the air handlers which weigh about 1,800 lbs each finally arrived at the site and were unloaded.  These are to be located in the loft above the transmitter hall.  We quickly learned that the forklift they brought to lift them into the loft could not lift them quite high enough.  Fortunately, Amado Felix, a former TWR employee from the 1960s and now a prominent businessman on Bonaire, was overseeing this delivery.  When he saw the problem, he immediately contacted his brother at the salt company to bring their telehandler (large front-end loader type fork lift).

The air handlers had been ordered as one left-hand unit and one right-hand unit.  Immediately, we noticed that, although the cooling coils were opposite as was needed, the access doors for the filters and blowers had not been reversed.  This was a problem, because one side of the air handler is close to the wall and the doors have to be on the side away from the wall.  Steven and I quickly changed the access doors to the other side while waiting for the telehandler.

The telehandler arrived shortly before lunch.  It definitely had the capability of lifting the air handlers high enough, but the boom was going to hit the ceiling trusses before the bottom of the air handler was high enough to slide into the loft.  Again, Amado Felix was there and with his contacts, and influence, was able to locate a forklift that could do the job after lunch.

Ralph and I went home for lunch, but today we did not siesta.  Instead, we went to Kooyman Hardware be pick up a couple of items for the project.

We had been forewarned that the forklift we needed was very busy on another job and that we could only use it for an hour.  Therefore, we had everything ready when the forklift arrived about 2pm.  I didn’t time how long it took to lift both air handlers into the loft, but am sure that it was done in less than 20 minutes.  We are so grateful that Amado was there to orchestrate this for us.  If TWR people were requesting this forklift, I am sure that it would have taken several days for it to come, rather than a couple of hours!