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A painting campaign lasts between 18 months and 3 years, and the tower is repainted every 7 years. So, basically it’s being painted upwards of 35% of the time f
by tmountain 3y ago
A painting campaign lasts between 18 months and 3 years, and the tower is repainted every 7 years. So, basically it’s being painted upwards of 35% of the time for longer campaigns. That’s a lot of maintenance!
- p-e-w 3y agoA paint job takes up to 3 years today, yet the entire tower (including painting) was built in 2 years, 140 years ago?!?
- contravariant 3y agoTo be fair that would mean taking it apart, repainting and rebuilding it would optimistically take 4 years, so painting it in situ is still faster.
- jameson71 3y agoI think the question is why does it take longer to paint it than it took to build it?
- manarth 3y agoDid they build it then paint it? Or paint it (the components, during fabrication), then build it, with already-painted components?
- mattlondon 3y agoBecause they probably didn't need to strip any old paint off first. I my experience of painting houses etc (limited I know), the actual painting bit is the final 25-33% of the time. The rest of it is making the rest of it ready to be painted. So stripping off, preparing the surfaces, making good any bad bits etc ... only then can you start to paint it. When they had fresh new metal to work with they could probably just paint straight away with zero prep. It may have even arrived at the site already primed. Plus it was probably easier logistics too in terms of seeing which bits were painted or not - if you are painting over the same colour it is hard to know what you have done and what you have not unless you are quite meticulous. However if you have a good contrast you could just give paintbrushes to 100 people and say "keep painting until all the grey bits are red" or whatever and not worry about the planning or tracking of which bits have been done when - just keep going until everything is red or whatever.
- brewtide 3y agoAs a housepainter, this is probably the best reasoning and where my mind immediately jumped to. The prep work in painting is as you said the majority of the work -- many many many hours spent first slowly destroying something further, then bringing a surface back to the state where, finally, you get to make it all one solid color of protection, once again. Generally the largest difference in a homeowner painted themselves vs a professional painter -- the amount of prep work required can be astronomical and absolutely mind numbing but without it, one will never end up with the final very nice and long(er) lasting result. Once again, you get back what you put in!
- guhidalg 3y agoThis guy paints. Seriously though, if you use house drywall painting over existing paint as an example, the actual "paint on surface" step really is short. In my most recent paint adventure the procedure was: o move furniture o lay down canvas o tape o sand o [prime, depends on base and final color] o paint o wait to dry o sand o paint o undo the coverings. o enjoy. It is very difficult to get all that done in one day, but I see new house interiors get basically painted in one-two day by a crew of like 6 guys, followed by an unending series of touch-ups where the painters did a half-assed job on trim, ceilings, and large featureless wall sections where it's difficult to see where paint is lacking. IME Painting is boring and very easy to get wrong so I have respect for painters that patiently do the job right the first time.
- jccalhoun 3y agoThe article says there are 50 painters. I'm sure there were more than 50 people working to build it.
- bombcar 3y agoIt wasn't open while it was being built, but it is open while being painted. And I dare say they could paint it much much faster if they really needed to, but it would involve very large crew for a short period of time. Better for everyone involved if the work is basically steady - then you can hire one group or company for a three year stint, instead of hiring 5-10x for 6 months.
- contravariant 3y agoMight even be better to delay it even further so you can just keep painting indefinitely with a small crew.
- TylerE 3y agoThat's what SF doesa with the golden gate. Want to say it gets repainted every 18 months or something?
- Karellen 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forth_Bridge#Maintenance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forth_Bridge#Maintenance
- hammock 3y agoI imagine you could just tape it, wrap it and then fumigate it with paint. Would go much quicker. Someone tell me why I’m wrong
- franky47 3y agoThe obvious, much quicker way would be to drop the required 60 tonnes of paint from Canadairs in a fly by. /s
- jagged-chisel 3y agoYou’ll miss lots of nooks and crannies because you can’t convince the air currents to blow in every conceivable way to move paint around. You air movement apparatus will take on much of the paint, probably causing it to function in much less than an ideal manner. There are challenges with keeping the paint wet while moving it with air pressure. You could probably get VC funding to solve these problems and then you’d be onto something.
- trvr 3y agoThey also appear to be stripping the old paint during this re-painting process.
- DougBTX 3y agoThe numbers measure different things, so hard to compare. One of the biggest sources of variation listed is the weather, while the first paint was done in a workshop (presumably where there is no influence from the weather). Also, a painting campaign also includes: > ... a preparatory stage to search for the most corroded areas ... these areas are then stripped, and a first coat of an anti-rust primer is applied ...presumably there was no corrosion just after the parts were originally made.
- stephen_g 3y agoFor sure on corrosion/rust - I’m experiencing this on a very small scale now - I’m working on repainting my old barbecue, it’s incredible how much time it takes to strip, apply rust remover, clean, fill, sand, prime and repaint the metal parts. Easily 5 to 10 times as much effort and time than it would take to paint fresh parts.
- dizhn 3y agoI am pretty sure the original materials also had to be sand blasted then shop primed. Raw steel material usually comes without any protection and stays outside for a long time.
- wongarsu 3y agoOn the other hand, building it took a lot more manyears than one round of repainting.
- foobarfoox2 3y agoDoing this with fewer employees over a longer period of time may just be more efficient. Surely they could speed it up by throwing more money at it, but does that help with anything?
- soared 3y agoBecause they’re using very old methods. We have much more modern ways to paint metal that aren’t being used. They could use electrostatic painting and finish the thing in a day if they really wanted. https://www.ghasterpaintinginc.com/blog/what-electrostatic-painting-is-and-why-it-works-so-well/#:~:text=Electrostatic%20painting%20is%20a%20process,and%20various%20types%20of%20plastics https://www.ghasterpaintinginc.com/blog/what-electrostatic-p....
- bfeynman 3y agoas an analogy, consider that renovating often is much more difficult and complex than new construction. As you build up you're making some irreversible moves, i.e. you build a door or a set of trusses, now you can't move a large piece through it anymore.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- doubleg72 3y agoSounds like you're unaware of what is involved in repainting. You don't think they just climb up and spray over the bird crap and other contaminates? 80% of the work is in prep and the technology in coatings 140 years ago wasn't where it's at today.
- adolph 3y agoThey should probably just rebuild it in cor-ten and be done with it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weathering_steel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weathering_steel
- yttribium 3y agoSimilar maintenance schedule to large steel naval vessels. Rust never sleeps.
- ihaveajob 3y agoThe Golden Gate Bridge is constantly being painted. The conditions are harsher, I suppose. https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/is-the-golden-gate-bridge-always-being-painted/ https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/is-the-golden-gate-bridg...
- YZF 3y agoSeeing the signs near the Golden Gate Bridge about how it's painted (EDIT: like a decade ago) made me think that it'd be a good idea to use drones to paint it. I explored that idea a bit deeper but it never went anywhere. There are/were some attempts at painting drones. I still think it'd be cool and could be made to work ;)
- ihaveajob 3y agoI suppose the risk of pollution would be too high, but it'd make for a cool demo. Once on a bike ride, I met a guy who worked painting the GGB. He said he was about 50, but look 65, so it seemed plausible. He wasn't wearing a helmet even on descents, which I asked him about, and his answer was that he spends all day in a harness with hard helmet, so the last thing he wanted was more helmet time in the weekend.
- helsinkiandrew 3y agoI thought this was a fact of all famous and suitably large bridges like the Sydney harbour and Forth bridges. Because painting doesn’t effect the running of the bridge much they just hire enough painters that gets the bridge painted in time and then start again. Apparently the Forth bridge now uses a new paint that means it doesn’t need to be painted for 20 years though
- danjc 3y agoIt's like rolling updates. You don't want to take the whole cluster offline while you upgrade. reply
- Incipient 3y agoThe Sydney harbour Bridge is painted all year round! https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/blogs/ag-blog/2013/11/painting-the-sydney-harbour-bridge/ https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/blogs/ag-blog/2013/1...