uk chat $$$$$$$

muckshifter - 3 May'05 - 09:20 - 824 of 825


Had another look at those photos over the bank holiday weekend and a few
minutes think about the Pennsylvanian job.
I came to the conclusion that of the three areas they intend to treat at
this stage, two are probably precautionary, and the other is unique.

The area of bifurcation / butressing is obviously a sidelong cut area - ie,
part cut, part fill, along the side of a hill, which gives it a unique
construction cross section. It probably has a drainage blanket beneath it
which exacerbates the need to treat it.

The area with blacktop on (317?)looks to me like a precaution. In other
words they are testing their ability to deal with leachates which might come
from a completed section of road. This would allow them to get on with
completion of the road, knowing that they could deal with it in the unlikely
event that contaminated leachate was created after the road was in use. This
ability to get on with blacktopping the road should, in itself, solve the
problem of pyritic fill in other areas by cutting off the flow of water
through the embankments which contain it.

The third area, the treatment of a cut batter surprises me. Although in the
I-99 progress report, which bros1 posted a link to, there was talk of
rainfall on the cut face creating the problem, I reckoned it was far more
likely that the problem came from a water flow through the seam of pyritic
material which had been opened at the cut face. In other words rainfall got
into the nasty stuff elsewhere and came out at the cut face, which is a
common problem. The normal way of dealing with flows out of a cut face
(which are usually simple uncontaminated groundwater) would be to pick them
up at the low point of the permeable strata with a batter drain. This is
where I would have expected the bauxsol treatment - in the drainage media.
So I still do not understand the significance of the intended action in this
case, and suspect that it again has to do with a trial for a potential post
road opening solution - ie another confidence building measure to enable
them to get on with the road.

In terms of the value of this work, I believe that the value of the bauxsol
to be used will be approx $2 million, so again I believe that the value of
this job is much more in the establishment of the VTI name. Talking to my
VTI contact the other day about another project he says the company is very
enthusiastic about the US situation in general, particularly because the US
authorities are more open to new ideas - which is, funnily enough, what I've
been saying here in earlier posts.
Regards.



muckshifter
im taking it that you mean $2mill for the 100,000 yards,

so that would mean roughly $18 mill for the whole job if succesful am i
correct,
imo these trial show how long and hard an answer has been coming and also
shows pendot desperation in finding 1 in bauxsol '

its also nice to see the butress would be a world first for bauxsol

Muckshifter is in the road construction business in UK.

Madprof