Another company makes a 21-foot bridge unit that can be bolted to a single 7-foot-wide tower like you see in the diagram below left. Using these bridges, the end user could erect “mini-mast climbers” every 21 feet down the wall and connect them together with planks. Sounds like a nifty idea – fewer towers to buy and fewer picks to move it. The main problem is that they collapse!
You see, a bridge must be supported on each end, otherwise your load is cantilevered. Cantilevering a pallet of block or brick is likely to cause the tower to tip over, or buckle and fail, like you see below right.
CAN CAUSE
Common sense might tell you it’s not safe to land a pallet of block on a cantilevered platform, but a forklift driver in a hurry will usually land materials anywhere he can. He’s not hired to decide whether or not a scaffold is structurally sound enough to support materials. No one expects a scaffold to collapse just by landing a pallet of block.
This practice of making your own “mini-mast climbers” is specifically forbidden by the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers: EM385 22.J.06: Bridges will not be permitted on a single tower and used as a “mini-mast climbing scaffold”.
Another even more dangerous variation (below) of this practice occurs when two of these “mini mast-climbers” are erected seven feet apart and connected with short planks. The concept is sold as “Cut scaffold moving time in half!”
A pallet of materials landed on the planks between the towers will likely cause BOTH of them to collapse. That’s 49 to 63 feet of scaffolding (and workers) going down all at once.
CAN CAUSE
The Non-Stop Bridge System
We would like to show you how we employ a bridge unit and why ours has never collapsed.
SAFE. The Non-Stop bridge is 21 feet long and connects between two towers ONLY. It cannot be attached to a single tower. It employs a fool-proof lock-on connection with NO nuts and bolts.
ADJUSTABLE. The Non-Stop bridge is adjustable from 13′-8″ to 21′-0″ long to fit most any wall length.
HIGHEST CAPACITY. Forklifts can land materials anywhere without threatening the stability of the scaffold. The Non-Stop Bridge has an 8000-pound capacity!
EASY CRANKING. Since Non-Stop winches have about twice the cranking power of brand X, lifting the bridge when it’s loaded with materials is easy. Compare how easy it is to crank Non-Stop over Brand X in the two videos below.
Look how hard the men are straining to crank!
And there’s no load on the scaffold!
SIMPLE. The Non-Stop bridge consists of only three parts: The wall-side truss, the labor-side truss, and the 2 platform brackets.
The trusses come in two pieces. You can fasten them together and leave them that way forever, or break them down in seconds to move to the job in a pickup truck.
The plank configuration is exactly the same as regular Non-Stop Heavy-Duty scaffolding, especially the cut-boards that give the masons a flat workbench.
The laborers have 5 boards in addition to the masons’ workbench. There you can use short boards or full 16-footers.
VERSATILE. Our customers’ are crazy about one of our most popular features: START THE WALL RIGHT OFF THE SCAFFOLD. And the Non-Stop bridge works exactly the same way!
Set up your towers along the wall. Stock the scaffold and start building your wall. When you get scaffold-high, your men KEEP WORKING instead losing 30 minutes of production time while they move to another wall.
The Non-Stop bridge also has built-in hop-board brackets, just like regular Non-Stop Heavy-Duty.
