A pictorial on the safety and versatility attributes of mast climbing units.

Kevin O’Shea, safety and training director of Mastclimbers LLC, provided captions for each of these pictures.

Wuthering Heights

This picture speaks for itself: Mast climbers are tremendously well suited to stucco coverage of large areas of height.

Fast travel speed, overhead protection, weather canopies, long platform lengths, high capacities, and the ability to profile balcony areas make mast climbers the automatic choice for this type of stucco project.

The job is located at Aberdeen Condominiums in Atlanta.

Easing Job Site Congestion

Mast climbers are widely used in situations where city center projects are short on space and high on congestion.

The picture to the right is a prime example and demonstrates the ability of the mast climber to provide total façade coverage while only leaving a small “footprint” on the ground.

The mast climber system, which was providing all-trade access to a new university building in the middle of Atlanta, provided coverage of a 10,000 square foot elevation, while taking up only 27 square feet of ground space. The units were set up in a fraction of the time it would have taken to scaffold the job, and traffic disturbance during set-up was kept to a minimum because the units were partially assembled before being quickly dropped into position.

Installation took less than two days.

City Restoration

The Guggenheim Building in Rochester, N.Y., is a perfect example of how mast climbers can provide an innovative solution to a project that, by using traditional methods of access, would be problematic and time-consuming, creating the opportunity for project costs to soar. Working with the manufacturer Fraco, Mastclimbers LLC created a “U” shaped, twin mast platform, which profiled the building exactly, creating a platform which provided stability, precise positioning, high capacity, and a large working area.

The project, which involved the removal and replacement of the heavy stone cladding panels on the building, was completed months ahead of schedule, and the masons, who previously had never used a mast climber before, quickly became experts on the use of the equipment.

“We essentially have a workshop in the sky, and once our masons get up to their working height on the elevation they don’t want to come down,” says Tom Fee, project manager with Building Restoration Corporation. “They have all their tools and equipment with them, and we even have a portable restroom up on the mast climber. The use of the mast climber has transformed the job.”