Helping water flow in arid Great Plains
Helping to replenish drought-hit cities is the job of three Volvo excavators , digging deep to rebuild the underground infrastructure of the Great American Desert in North America .
Amarillo , Texas , sits in the crosshairs of America ’ s routes 40 and 287 , and is a waypoint between Albuquerque and Oklahoma City . The area is rich in cowboy culture and mementos of its Route 66 heyday , best symbolised by the Cadillac Ranch , located just west of the city .
But beyond the tourist attractions , the semi-desert region of the High Plains in which Amarillo is located is the sunbelt of the south . The average annual rainfall is less than 60cm and the heat is often upwards of 43 ° C . With several droughts in recent years , water is in short supply . Lake Meredith , one of the city ’ s main water sources , is dwindling , placing greater demands on the Ogallala aquifer : the vast underground reservoir that supplies Amarillo ’ s 190 000 residents .
As a conservation effort , the city recycles and sells back more than 18 billion litres of effluent each year to regional electric utilities as cooling water for generators . Recently , the Potter County Wellfield — the first major wellfield since 1956 — was drilled , bringing water to Amarillo to help sustain residential and commercial growth .
On average , Amarillo Utility Contractors places more than 600 000m of water and sewer pipe each year . “ When I started the company , our projects were relatively small and shallow ,” Taylor recalls . “ Over time , we ’ ve taken on more challenging projects .”
To maintain high performance in the extreme environment , the Volvo EC350E features a hydraulically driven , electronically controlled cooling fan , designed to protect machine vitals .
With over 1 600km of wastewater lines and 200km of stormwater drainage snaking below the city , the company is hard at work to repair , replace , and rehabilitate the water and sewer lines — most of which date back to the 1950s .
To match the deep trenching and large pipe requirements of urban projects , Amarillo Utility Contractors decided that it needed to upgrade its fleet . After attending the 2015 Volvo Days customer event in Shippensburg , Pennsylvania , Taylor added three Volvo EC350E crawler excavators to his fleet of 13 machines . u
Precast system saves six months on reservoir build
A novel precast system has helped shave as much as eight months off a reservoir construction programme in Katlehong , Gauteng . The roof of the 30 mega-litre reservoir comprises more than 2 000m 2 of slabs , each up to 250mm deep , and is supported by 16 columns and 18 beams , weighing a total of 12.3t and 7.5t , respectively .
The system was designed , manufactured , and installed by Corestruc , complementing its already impressive portfolio of completed precast concrete structures , ranging from public sector infrastructure projects through to private property developments . On this project , Corestruc worked closely with civil engineering contractors , Civcon and QC4 Civils , as well as consulting engineer , TLS Engineers & Project Managers , to deliver the project on behalf of Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality .
QC4 Civils ’ contracts manager , Ettiene Coetzee , says that this is the largest reinforced post-tensioned ground reservoir to be built by the company , as well as the first such structure to feature a precast concrete roof . Coetzee is extremely impressed with the system and service he received from Corestruc , noting that the professional team had allowed for 26 weeks to build the structure ; however , this period could easily have been halved using the system .
“ One of the biggest advantages is that it can be installed without the need to erect , dismantle , and remove tons of supporting scaffolding , while the precast system can be programmed concurrently with other activities and , therefore , does not restrict multiple activities on site ,” he says .
Corestruc ’ s involvement in the project started right from the outset in its design stages , when every aspect of the system was finalised right down to the type of connection that would be used to build the roof . u tech news
Volvo
To maintain high performance in the extreme environment , the Volvo EC350E features a hydraulically driven , electronically controlled cooling fan .
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