1 full hour of pre.heating... 2 insulation blankets draped over the deck w/2 big heaters, 1 to the pump kit & 1 to the assend with the tip hose over the exhaust

20 degrees C.. Pump On!

Then hurry up & blow out before the shite freezes up! The 10+ minutes it takes to boom back to the mixer is a bit nerve racking. Hyd. oil in the boom cylinders so thick you could cut it with a knife. 

Keeping water fluid and flowing enough to wash up the pump is the funnest part of all of it!

Wow TooTall, very cool. I hope your making bank. Thanks so much for the pictures.

Nice pics, where are these taken?

and a big storm heading your way

What was the outside temp?

That must be last years photo's. I hope? 

lol  you need to insulate your boom pipe makes world of difference in the cold temps works great for us in sask. for the winter we are also looking at insultating the hyd. lines to help keep from the fluid turning to sludge

We have our booms here in Sask wrapped too but we use a little thinner Hyd oil in a few of the pumps and that seems to make a difference, not as thick in lower temps. Anything below -25C and we wrap the pump kit and heat it.

TOOTALL I am taking you when back to Alaska for the past summer and forgot how to fly south, THE GOLD RUSH GUYS LEFT LONG AGO YOU SHOULD HAVE HITCHED A RIDE SOUTH.

When we bought one of our pumps back in the early 90's the hydraulic tank was full of a red fluid called automatic transmission fluid (atf).

The cold temperatures and lower pouring point (of atf) may have had something to do with working in a colder climate.

Realy cool with -25   I use to just cover the whole truck with an awning. Tugg it propperly in and the excaus gasses will keep the temp above 0.

By the way.. I was told that you shouldn't operate a pump under about -15 because the caracteristics of the metal in the boom changes and makes the boom weaker..

Dipstick you are very right but you know what they say if you are going to be dumb you better be tough and TOOTALL  must be one tough sucker.

Insulating the hydraulic lines will do very little.  The volume of cold fluid sitting in the cylinders is what makes the boom so sluggish.  Open up the wallet and change the hydraulic oil in the boom's system.  If the oil isn't houred out, it's a good opportunity to refresh it with a filter cart and remove any moisture via vacuum dehydration or with filter elements.  It can be used again when the wheather warms....same goes for the lighter 'winter' oil.

And gigantic balls ey Biged.. But also I have the feeling that a lot of operators are very selective in which rules they absolutely want to follow and which they just ignor.. No steal at endhose and dunnage seems to be the favourites to realy stick to.. But when schwing and putz say your boom might break when working under -15 most like to act like they didn't hear that.. Just like the powerline thing. Everyone sticks to the 6 meters but the real rule that you should place the pump so that you cant come closer then 6 meters even if you tryed to and suddely everyone has hearing problems again...

I would have to agree with you there, if we stopped working after -15, we wouldnt work for 6 months of the year!

So what is this -25 -15 stuff? Celsius? American temp.. You go out below Zero your asking for trouble.

-15, -25.. Thats celcius... like this job would have been possible with line straight from the hopper.. It would all just need whole different planning..

Not saing I always stick to the rules.. Just noticing I'm not the only one  

-15C  =  5F

-25C =  -13F

They're current pics from a cpl weeks ago. The project is on Elemendorf AFB in Anchorage AK. Fun stuff!! It's barely been above 0(zero) the past few weeks so I've been a line draggon pumpin everything with a Schwing 1000 lately.