Trying to box clever

How do you move a one tonne metal box up a hill through a woodland? With difficulty is the short answer.

Having had a cut down container delivered to site the challenge is to move it up through the trees whilst trying hard not to cut down any of the branches or trees so that I maintain the unmanaged feel to the entrance.

A one tonne box is a very numb object. Adding to its lack of manoeuvrability are the protruding metal edges at each corner which dig in and drag along the ground surface.

So the first job was to lift it up off the ground and get it sat on some wooden runners that would allow it to move a lot more freely (freely – its all relative). The first attempt at this  used a scaffolding pole and a fulcrum and managed to lift the box but was incredibly frustrating. Each time I managed to get my weight in the right place in order to lift the box, I couldn’t then reach what it was that I wanted to put under the lifted box. It was bit like that final scene from the Italian job where the coach is balanced over the precipice. Each time they move to try and recover the stolen  bullion, the gold bars slide a little bit further away. A far more practical approach has been to use a 2 tonne low profile trolley jack that slides under the box and is able to lift it up and leave me both hands free to insert the wooden runners. I have also greased the top rails of each of these wooden runners with a general purpose grease, apparently there isn’t a specialised “moving shipping container” grease available!

Once the box is lifted off the ground and so not digging in the next part of the process is  to be able to pull it up the sloping woodland. For this I am using a Tirfor. This is an amazingly effective and reasonably simple device that uses a pair of plier like jaws to gradually pull a metal wire through itself driven. The winch is manually driven by working the handle back and forth. You can get various capacities, I opted for a 1.6 tonne version so that I had plenty of muscle.

The Tirfor is anchored to a series of handily placed trees with a canvas sling that ensures that there is no damage caused to the trees.

The approach has now developed into and involves setting the four wooden runners, one on each side at the front and one on each side at the rear. The winch is then used to pull the cable in so that the box moves along the runners. Each runner is about three foot long so that is the maximum travel in one pull. You then need to reset the whole thing ie pull the front runners out and push the rear runners in and repeat the process.

So all that’s left to do now is to repeat the process say about 200 times and before you now what has happened the box is at the top of the wood.

The reality is that progress is a lot slower and yesterday I managed only 80 feet. Still considering that this is a single handed tracking of a one tonne weight up a rough woodland floor I am very pleased that it moves at all.

canvas hoist slings are invaluable

I will try to post a series of photographs showing the overall progress.

More next time…………..