Post
by Boots » Fri. Dec. 09, 2011 7:34 pm
Found this topic and I figured I would share my story. I bought a used Burnham hand fired boiler from someone on Craig's List, the seller said he thought it weighed 600-700 lbs. I took a friend of mine with me to pick the boiler up and the seller helped us load it. We strapped it to some hand trucks and tried to give it a shove to get it back on its wheels. The 3 of us could not get it pivoted on to the wheels to roll it up the ramp of the trailer. so we took my large ratchet straps, rated at 2,000 lb hooked it to the bottom of the hand trucks and to the front of the utility trailer. We slowly ratcheted it up the ramp. onec we got it onto the deck of the trailer we "walked" it into the center of the trailer. and strapped her down.
When we got to my house I backed the trailer up to my basement door that covers the steps and lowered the ramp/gate. we "walked" the boiler to the back of the trailer up to the edge of the ramp and reattached the ratchet strap. We lowered the boiler, still strapped to the hand truck down the ramp and up to the edge of the first step. This is where it got scary. With the help of my father-in-law and my friend we slowly lowered the boiler one "click" at a time untill we lowered it down I think 8 steps. by the time the boiler was sitting flat on the basement floor my arms where killing me from operating the ratchet strap. later, once I got a copy of the owners/operators manual for my boiler I found out it weighs 980lbs. No wonder it took forever to unload it.
now just to get it burning some black gold and ill be good to go.