An ol' Dam Post

It never gets old. I'm so glad I am Mormon and think its funny.

At BYU I had a Earth Dam class. As classmates, we would work on our Dam homework and ask Dam questions of our Dam teacher.

:-)

While I was in Boise for thanksgiving, my big brother wanted me to take a look at a Dam. He's helping the owners deal with the State Engineers and wanted to be able to get my opinion on Dam rabbits they might throw out for him to chase instead of dealing with the real Dam issues.

:-) (Still makes me smile)

I took some way cool Dam pictures! Emily found some on the Internet, but mine are way cooler... Dam cooler if I do say so myself.

:-) (Yup, still funny!)

Warning.. Lots. And. LOTS. of DAM PICTURES Ahead. Those of u who might be squeamish or not find this as interesting as I do... well... u might as well stop reading the blog altogether. I am an engineer after all.

Here is the downstream side of the Dam.




Emily is posing for scale (it's the first arch of the dam) and Jared is showing off the obvious damage the dam has received. The poor thing was built in the 1930's. I actually took quite a few pictures of the exposed rebar and degradation of the concrete, but I won't bore u.

The state made the owners take out 2 bays out and drain the lake because of "fears" the Dam would fail and wipe out the 10 families at the bottom of an irrigation canal. Of course, the fact that the original stream course is in the other direction merrily is the exception that proves the rule. Here is the bay that was taken out.


Jared is showing the scale of the base of the original arch. You can see the large aggregate (engineer speak for rocks) they used. Unfortunately, that is not necessarily a good thing.


Here is the upstream side of the Dam. You can see that the city allowed them to fill the dam up to the first works. Dead storage is at about 200 acre-ft if I remember correctly. Emily is showing the one of the first tries to make the dam waterproof. Obviously it didn't work very well as u can see the matting used to support it showing through and how it is no longer bonded to the concrete.

We then each had to see how high we could climb the cracking concrete. Nathan shouted "Please get off the Dam wall children!" The boys then threw rocks so we could hear the weird sound they made skipping over the ice.

Nathan found the perfect rock for his sweetheart.

Then we went around to the downstream waterworks. Can you see the degradation of the beams they used to try and stabilize the arches? Can you see Jared against the stem? He pulled his legs out straight, but I guess I didn't get it on camera.
On the next bay over, one of the stabilizing concrete beams had fallen down and you could see the rebar and steel they had used to try and connect it to the original Dam.

As you can see they were having a small problem with leakage. Emily looks a little worried.

Of course, Nathan had great privileges so we got to go and see the actual waterworks. These are the same valves put in with the original dam. It was kinda dark and scary, but I got in to look. Nathan said to beware the pack rat living there, but I didn't see him.

That is the end of your Dam tour. Don't forget to tip your Dam tour guide!

OK.. I just have to show you one picture of the spalding of the concrete. You can see the rebar both vertical and horizontal (above the bird nests). The lines in the concrete are from the forms used to cast the concrete. Nowadays we don't use planks in our forms, but they probably needed too back then because of the great depths they were pouring at.