130ft MEWP Fatality

[Pedroski]

it's not simply overloading but you don't know how often a MEWP has had a large lump of tree battering down on its joints- lets face it- no one would tell the hire company that they may have damaged it:sneaky2:

 

Absolutely true.

[Rich2484]

Dean I must say I see a big mewp on its side, but no glimmer of a tree???

[Pedroski]

Dean I must say I see a big mewp on its side, but no glimmer of a tree???

 

He uses it for hedgecutting

[Gray git]

Every time i have seen a mewp LOLER tested it has only taken about 20 min and involved a look over and more attention payed to if any pipes or rams are leaking than anything ells, how can you check for this type of boom bending without Xray or scan checks for any hairline cracks.

Always felt it would be the legs on these things that would give out first and send me groundward especialy on the 22m that i used to use mounted on a cabstar, would go out 11m with less than a 3m leg span.

[Dean Lofthouse]

It never did anything, a mate ask me if I would use it to let him point a tiny bit of this gable end as he had been quoted £600 to scaffold it to do five minutes pointing.

It was a favour, coming back down we had to negotiate several phone lines, when all of a sudden it went into free fall .

After a lot of investigation it was narrowed down to an hydraulic fault which stopped the sensors detecting the pressures which fooled the machine into letting us go outside the working envelope with two men up.

 

Hence I never work with two men in the basket and never will again. One man and a saw will be half the capacity of the basket an stay well within the operating safety margins

[Dean Lofthouse]

For those interested, another mewp failure, same machine as mine, same position and same senario.

 

Chris, the guy involved in this case, also survived as did his passenger. I did speak to him but not recently, he was badly injured

 

the full thread and pictures halfway through

 

http://arbtalk.co.uk/forum/general-chat/22796-tree-surgery-accident-dorset-involving-mewp.html

[timtree81]

That's not good , I use a mewp all the time makes you wonder , hope the user is ok

[Pedroski]

I had a failure on a Nifty 120 - one of the microswitches or something conked out when I was at max height and rotated 90 degrees. It wouldn't rotate back and I couldn't lower down as I was over a building and a fence. Mate had to manually rotate the thing first. Soon as it conked out it dawned on my that I could have done with an abseil kit with me so I could at least get down to the ground!

[Dean Lofthouse]

I always take an abseil kit (-:

[Rich2484]

I had a failure on a Nifty 120 - one of the microswitches or something conked out when I was at max height and rotated 90 degrees. It wouldn't rotate back and I couldn't lower down as I was over a building and a fence. Mate had to manually rotate the thing first. Soon as it conked out it dawned on my that I could have done with an abseil kit with me so I could at least get down to the ground!

 

We used one of these ones a short while ago. Battery went flat on us. I had to pump it by hand to lower it. I hate the way they are on batts. I did ask about a petrol engine model but they don't have them.

 

If the legs aren't down right when they are up they can lift, cutting of power to the cage, this I hate as its easy to get stuck this way.