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Buildings usually know better than to leave things like this out by the recycling blue bins, but not to worry, I lost professional interest when I saw the words "NO DEPOSIT." It didn't appear to be any kind of ready-to-drink beverage anyway. It's something called "Petroleum Oil" and the labeling mentions "food" twice, so, I thought cooking oil perhaps. Fortunately before I popped the plug to have a wee taste, a worker came out of the building. As he lunged at me with the claw hammer, he explained to me what it was -- after first asking me, in colourful worker-speak, to get the @#$% away from the barrels.

The oil was a Mobil-brand lubricant hydraulic oil called NUTO H-C 32, and all 410 litres of it was needed as part of refitting the thirty-year-old elevator of the sprawling, three-storey apartment complex (not pictured). Apparently the elevator system includes a very large oil tank/reservoir, and this new oil was going to replace the very old oil in that tank. This oil will be what hydraulically lifts the elevator for, well, as long as the last batch, perhaps 30 years.

Servicing elevators is big business in Vancouver (probably at least as lucrative as plumbing). Servicing old elevator equipment is a major, if not the major, aspect of that business. Elevators don't seem to wear out like refrigerators. In my two years as a custodian at the 40-year-old Masonic Centre, I learned that there are hundreds, if not thousands of elevators in the city driven and controlled by 40-plus-year-old electromechanical switching systems, which are maintained as they are. Elevator technicians have a lot of respect for the high quality of the old motors and switching systems. The Masonic Centre's four-decade-old elevator switches provide an awesome light and sound show, and I kidded myself that after two years, the pattern of clicks and sparks was beginning to make some kind of sense. The most interesting thing I learnt about elevators there, was that the building, though built with two elevator shafts, began operation with only one elevator, The second elevator, added about ten years later (by helicopter?) was older than the first elevator. That's right -- second-hand elevators. Who knew? Click the images to enlarge them.

Minor update -- I spoke to a tenant of this apartment building, who was not impressed with the fact that the major refit/overhaul had, when we spoke, kept their elevator out of commission for three weeks!