What do you all do in the winter?

Winter is an extremely important time for the maintenance department.  Maintenance departments take this time to service and thoroughly clean the equipment, restore the cutting units, tree work, irrigation upgrades, as well as projects when weather permits.  Last year we made considerable upgrades to the maintenance shop.  Like any structure, such as a house, we needed to address painting, caulking, insulation, plumbing, etc.  We also worked on making the shop more organized.  This included making pallet shelving in order to free up floor space. 

Back to the equipment.  As many of you have noticed, Doctor Loewen has made considerable investments with regard to equipment.  Our maintenance staff is extremely grateful because these investments have made us more effective and efficient.  We intend for these tools to be effective throughout their depreciation period and in some instances longer.  So, in addition to our preventative maintenance standards set by our Equipment Manager, Dave Hacker, it is necessary to have a comprehensive winter overhaul program as well.  This may include bearings, belts, tires, brakes, etc, and this requires the assistance of the entire maintenance crew because Dave's winter is spent sharpening reels and overhauling cutting units.  Let me put it this way, our hours in the winter time are spent wisely.

Here are some pictures to illustrate what our winter involves inside the shop when it's too cold to work outside.

Equipment Manager, Dave Hacker, inspecting a reel.

                                         

Pallet shelving built by John Robinson last season to create more floor space

This is our state of the art grinder.  This was purchased last year and Dave uses it to grind our reels to manufacturer specs.

Facility Manager, Sam Bannister, putting the finishing touches on our new tee markers.

We completely sandblasted and repainted the pump platform.  It was in pretty bad shape.  The guys did an excellent job.  They didn't like that sandblasting either.