The City Lift CL25 is made in Sweden by Artic Cranes, of which City Lifting owner Trevor Jepson is a shareholder.
The short-jibbed CL25 demonstrated its value on the 8 Bishopsgate site in the City of London for Keltbray. But that was more than a year ago and didn’t get much publicity.
Erected on a gantry with a three-metre base cross, it unloaded delivery vehicles from the roadside and delivered them into a massive basement excavation, 18 metres deep, on the other side of the gantry.
The gantry on which the crane sat provided a safe covered walkway for pedestrians, who walked directly under the tower crane base.
The spec sheet for the CL25 shows that it lifts a maximum of 2,500kg out to six metres, and 1,850kg at maximum reach of 10 metres. It has a hook speed of 36 metres per minute and a maximum hook height of 150 metres.
City Lifting boss Trevor Jepson explained the benefits it brought to the Bishopsgate project during the 16 weeks it was on site.
“It was quite tricky to erect as we only had a three-metre wide pit lane to stand the mobile crane and the transport. A Liebherr LTC 1050 [telescopic mobile crane] working on Variobase outriggers straight down, and using the elevating cab to miss the hoarding, did the trick.
“The City Lifter was kept busy feeding the whole basement with materials from the pit lane. Driven by remote control and lifting over the covered pedestrian route it was probably the only way to do the job until the tower cranes started. A couple of mini crawler cranes in the basement moved the steel and materials around the basement.
“The low weight of the crane and the small base cross were the deciding factor and the range of jobs these little crane can carry out hasn’t yet been discovered.”
Trevor Jepson has high hopes that further applications will be found for the mini tower crane as he believes it has potential to bring benefits to many construction sites. It could, for example, be a cheaper option to keeping a larger tower crane on site for lifting finishing components on a tall building – curtain walling, for example – as it carries enough rope to lift great heights but is light enough (3.5 tonnes) to sit on top of a building.
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