![]() The actual site where men would be working was further protected by the construction of two temporary coffer dams which can be seen on the sketch above. You will be Interseted to Know about – How To Solve The Biggest Problems With Construction Delay Analysis These were started in May 1931 and completed in September 1933. in diameter and their combined length was nearly 5 kilometers. This required four diversion tunnels were driven through the canyon walls, two on the Nevada side and two on the Arizona side. So now we know how the Hoover Dam was built, but that is just the end of that project! Before they could start on it they had to divert the the Colorado River away from the construction site. Some going, eh? So why was it actually built? Multiple reasons: irrigation, flood prevention and hydroelectric power generation. Once the bottom of the bucket opened up, it disgorged 6.1 m3 of concrete which was, generally, only a layer a couple of centimeters thick in that particular column.Īll this was done between June 1933 and June 1935. The required size of aggregate in the concrete differed depending on placement in the dam (from pea-sized gravel to 230 mm stones) so it was vital that the bucket be maneuvered to the proper column. The buckets were then suspended from aerial cableways, which were used to deliver the bucket to a specific column. It was delivered to site by special rail cars in steel buckets which weighed 18 tonnes when full. The concrete was made in two massive concrete plants on the Nevada side. Grout was also used to fill the hairline spaces between columns, which were grooved to increase the strength of the joints. ![]() ![]() Once an individual block had cured and had stopped contracting, the pipes were filled with grout. More than 937 kilometres of cooling pipes were placed within the concrete. In addition, 850,000 m3 were used in the power plant and other works. For the Hoover Dam, however, it was calculated that, make it in a continuous pour, and it would take 125 years to cool and would crack and crumble! Not much use for a dam! So what happened is that it was poured in blocks up to 15 metres square and 1.5 metres high – all 2,480,000 m3 of it! Now we are all vaguely aware that concrete heats and contracts as it cures, but that isn’t usually a problem on any of our jobs. From the point of view of we construction people the most interesting thing about the Hoover Dam is that it was a “first”! Never before had concrete been poured in such quantities! So here goes, how they built the hoover dam. ![]()
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