40
SITE REPORT
ACCESS, LIFT & HANDLERS
JULY-AUGUST 2013
A
t first blush it sounds like a simple
project: paint a champagne-colored
stripe on the wall of a movie theater
lobby. But as Jesse Truesdale will tell you,
the devil is in the details. The owner of Cobb
Theatres in Leesburg, VA, wanted a 3-inch by
280-foot ribbon of color painted 30 feet above
the ground on the wall of the theater lobby,
including the large, open stairwell that takes
theater patrons from the ground-floor entrance
to the second-floor lobby – a decorative detail
moviegoers will see as they stand at the top
of the long staircase, face the opposing wall
and turn in a complete circle. Truesdale, part
owner, along with her husband Ben Truesdale,
of TrueBuilt, LLC, was tasked with making that
stripe a reality on the theater wall.
Jesse Truesdale likes a good challenge. Her
company, a northern Virginia-based residential
and commercial general contracting firm that
provides construction and preconstruction
services, including design and budgeting,
tackles projects that other companies often
turn down.
“We have a real passion for building, and we
look for those projects that present interesting
challenges,” she says. “The theater in
Leesburg turned out to be such a challenge –
one that the JLG compact crawler boom proved
instrumental in helping us overcome.”
As she studied the project, Truesdale realized
her options were limited. “Leaning a ladder
on the two staircase landings would not
work, because the scale of the painting and
the fact that the paint was being applied to a
curved wall required that the painter be able to
regularly step away from the wall and check
the perspective.”
‘Stable’ crawler boom
Scaffolding presented another option – a time
consuming and expensive option, she says,
which, like the ladder, would not provide
painters with the necessary perspective and
would have required that the entire staircase
be taken out of commission for the length of
the project.
Truesdale also considered using equipment
to help reach the wall, but the building design
is not conducive to moving equipment to the
second floor. The small passenger elevator,
located in a narrow corridor, and the freight
elevator, located in a kitchen that offered little
room to maneuver, could not handle heavy,
A JLG X700AJ compact
crawler boom provided
all the up-and-over reach
needed when other lifting
options fell flat.
ALH
reports
The JLG X700AJ compact
crawler boom inside the theater.
Versatile
bulky equipment. Removing windows to provide
access to the second floor proved to be cost
prohibitive. And so, the search began for a
compact piece of aerial equipment that could
move up a ramp built on top of the middle
portion of the three-part staircase and provide
access from the second floor, across the
stairwell to the wall.
After renting a piece of equipment that
appeared promising, Truesdale and her team
discovered it was unable to maintain the angle
necessary to climb the ramp, moving only 3
feet up the structure before getting stuck. As
luck would have it, a sales rep from another
rental company visited the theater, noted
the problem, and proposed the JLG X700AJ
compact crawler boom as a solution.
“He had my attention at a critical moment,
and after taking a look at the crawler boom, I
was willing to give the machine a try,” recalled
Truesdale. A week later, the crawler boom was
onsite and performing to expectations.
“We were able to secure a battery-operated
model, which was a requirement, since I had
no way of venting fumes to the outside,” says
Truesdale. “And it made it up the entire ramp
without any problems.”
Truesdale admitted to being nervous to use
the unfamiliar equipment. But, inspired by its
ability to climb the stairs, she was optimistic
about its performance. In fact, Truesdale and
her crew quickly learned to use the crawler
boom, which enabled painters to stand in the
bucket, sketch the stripe in pencil using a
2-foot by 2-foot grid, and then paint it.
The compact boom measures just 39 inches
across and features a horizontal reach of 37
feet. With a platform capacity of 440 pounds
and an elevated height of 69 feet and 7 inches,
the machine earned rave reviews for its
performance at the theater.
“We found the crawler boom to be really,
really versatile and at the same time, extremely
stable,” she says. “Once you get used to it,
