Things to do on a 12' ladder

    By Dee aka Elder Barrow
So this past couple of weeks has had a theme. Everything I'm doing has to be done off a 12' ladder.  They have large garages here that they keep all the diesel front end loaders, tractors, and various large machines with diesel engines.  They keep those areas warm because it is very hard to start a diesel engine in the cold.  They use gas radiant heat tubes which run all across the ceilings of the garages. They have 6 of these and waited until all but one of them has quit working before calling in the work order. Turns out mud daubers like to build their nests in the fresh air intake vents and the gas vents on these heaters.  When they do it on the air intake side the motors drawing in the air can't get any air so they run 24/7 and burn out. Or if they build on the exhaust side, the flames back into the control area and burn up the wiring which shorts out burning out transformers, controller boards, etc.  Any way I spend several days on a 12' ladder cleaning nests out of vents, replacing motors. transformers, controller boards and rewiring.
    Then I get called over to the temple's warehouse, where they have a nice standard gas heater but it is 12 feet in the air also.  I walk into the warehouse and the whole floor is covered with carpet and there is a guy in there sewing them together to make hall runners.  I explained that I need to get a ladder across all the carpet and set it up to fix the heater.  He told me, 'Don't worry about it someone will vacuum it.'  Did that and found out it needed a part that I didn't have but I could start the unit up and it would run until it brought the room to temperature.  He said that would be great he was finishing up today but need it be working the next Wednesday.  This was Friday I told him I would get the part Monday and would fix the heater on Tuesday.  God Has a Sense of Humor. The temple has been closed for the last 2 months and was reopening the next week.  They asked for volunteers to help clean and we volunteered.  Guess who got to vacuum the carpets on the 5th, 4th and 3rd floors.  Me and my companion.  He was right thought they got vacuumed.  Oh yea that part came in on Monday and I went over on Tuesday to put it in and the Temple Dept. decided to buy 68 new dressers for the temple worker housing and they stacked them under the heater.  I didn't have to move all 68 only 12 to get my ladder to the heater.  But as the man said, Welcome to Nauvoo.
    Next we replaced the A/C units on the roof of the visitors center in late October and November.  Had to replace all the copper pipes that carry the refrigerant. They wanted us to get the A/Cs working again but we needed to insulate all the new pipes.  Now most of the pipes were in the basement but  our boiler rooms have 16' ceilings and most of the pipes were 10' and higher so I spent the next 4 days on my ladder again gluing insulation on to pipes,
   The best thing I made since being here was this.  Love being here.