The call came in from Litchfield on a rough morning. A 35-foot, ~31,000-lb digester lid had jumped and landed crooked inside the concrete tank. A 90-ton crane tried to pick it and couldn’t move it an inch. Tight walls, bad angles, no room to swing. This is the kind of problem we’ve seen before, so we loaded steel, cribbing, and jacks and got on the road.
On site, we walked the tank, chalked centerlines, and checked clearances. Instead of forcing a pick, we built a six-point hydraulic jacking setup. Simple idea: make the lid think it’s light by lifting a little at a time from the right spots. We slid in beams, stacked a solid crib, set gauges at each jack, and worked in quarter-inch steps. Jack, hold, check level, wedge, repeat. Slow beats stuck.
After several careful rounds, the lid eased off the concrete lip. You could see it settle back to level on the dials before your eyes. We nudged it to the proper seat and locked it down—no drama, no damage to a 70-year-old cover. The plant crew got their asset back, and the site went from “we’re dead in the water” to “back online” by the end of the push.
Big thanks to the team on the ground and our partners for fast coordination—Tucker Mechanical’s ESG group, Spectrum Environmental, and the WPCA staff. If you’ve got a stuck structure, a failed pick, or a lift that needs finesse instead of brute force, call High Caliber Contracting. We’ll show up with steel, jacks, and a plan that works in tight spaces.