Tres Unidos Footbridge Project
Newsletter Issue 5, September 2006
previous issues
April, May, June, August
What's going on in Tres Unidos
Three months have already passed since we've last been in Tres Unidos and now it's time to go again. Next week our General Manager Eric Kuhn will go to Peru to meet the volunteers, to see what they have done so far and to prepare the upcoming steps with them. This will be the last visit before we go for final completion and inauguration.
As we suspected, the rainy season has already started and the villagers
decided to cast the concrete of the lower levels of both abutments
first instead of finishing one after another. During the works they had a shortage of sand and needed to buy more of it. Here our calculations obviously weren't good enough. Not so with the design: we calculated with a high safety factor which now proofs to be the right desicion. Because communicating over such a long distance and along the language barrier naturally causes small mistakes.
For instance, the "eyes" of the anchor rods, that were forged in Picota, do have shorter ends than expected. Therefore they are more prone to bend open. Also the concrete quality is not really like what we are used to here in Germany. However, there is nothing that needs to be done again or needs to be changed so far.
And a visit will provide enough time to discuss whatever problem there might be.
We will write about that in the next newsletter.
Wood for bridge deck
Quite early in the project
we already defined the kind of wood we want to use for the bridge deck. The
villagers now urge to buy it because it sums up to quite an amount
and needs to be cutted and transported to Tres Unidos from far away.
We plan to cover the cables with floorboards which differ from each other by one centimeter. This way we obtain slipping resistance when the wood becomes wet. The boards will be notched before and later put onto the cables. We won't use any additional connectors, all floorboards shall be pressed together by the force that pushes them forward to the deepest central point of the construction.
Plautstraße 80, 04179 Leipzig
www.tresunidos.alpintechnik.de