Painting the Water Tower (Shallow Thoughts)

Painting the Water Tower

I saw a notice in the paper that they're planning to paint the Barranca school water tower, something it has badly needed for some years. It made me wonder, though, how they did that.

Today I happened to be in the neighborhood and saw the preparations. It's quite an elaborate rig, with a crown of long poles from which hang separate lines that go all the way to the ground. Do the painters rappel down the lines and paint while hanging? What do they do once they get below the "golf ball" and need to paint the ball's underside or the stem?

I see they also have a basket that can carry a worker close to the stem. It looks like the basket can rotate all the way around the stem, but only at one height, right under the golf ball, so that doesn't really clear up the mystery of how they'll get to the rest of the stem or the underside of the ball.

I may have to visit Barranca more often over the next few weeks. Fortunately, Bayo Canyon is an excellent mountain bike trail, and on last week's women's trail ride organized by Beanie's Bike Shop, someone (thanks, Christina!) showed me the right line up the one tricky section just after Barranca Crossing that I didn't think was ridable. I went back with Dave a few days later and almost made it (and did make the alternate route that goes off to the right, which neither of us had made before — it helps a lot to know something is theoretically possible). So I'm motivated to go back again and get it right.

I'll post a followup if I learn more about how they paint the water tower.