Tres Unidos Footbridge Project
Newsletter Issue 8, January 2007
previous issues
April, May, June, August, September, October, December
We made it
Our bridge project is completed. The "Puente Machingero en Tres Unidos" is erected and spans the Mishquiyacu river with remarkable 75 meters. The name was choosen by the villagers. It is a native expression for all the people living in the Tres Unidos valley.
Previous to the inauguration were another 10 days construction work, which were accompanied by five of our company's employees. In the second week of January, just after our arrival in Tarapoto, we bought the last material - reinforcement for the hangers, paint to protect these and eight threaded bolts and nuts to connect the pylon logs. Furthermore we organised some more cement to cast the so-called shoes into the foundation.
When we arrived in Tres Unidos it was one of the very first actions to lay out the cables and prestress them. Next to this, the volunteers painted, cut the boards for the bridge deck and did various other preparatory work. But soon we faced our biggest challenge - the erection of the pylon logs and the installation of the cables. There was no lifting or stressing equipment available, the only thing we had was manpower galore. We had to find a way to handle the more than four meter long and extremely heavy logs without running the risk of accidents.
We solved this by nailing a small board on the lower end of each pylon which prevented the log from sliding away. With manpower we turned it over until it perfectly fitted the shoe. A temporary wooden construction held the inclined pylons in place until they were finally connected to each other.
Thanks to a trick, we copied from a Swiss cable car, the stressing of the cables wasn't a big problem. We just tied up a textile rope which became coiled on a piece of 20 mm reinforcement steel. (The construction is shown in our "technical details gallery".)
This way we managed to erect the bridge with not more than shovels, two hammers and chisels, one pincer, one wrench, a hand-driven drilling machine, a welding apparatus, two pieces of a metal pipe and - not to forget - few meters of textile rope from the local market. This seems astonishing even for us.
To cover the bridge with its boards and install the hangers was only a matter of sedulity and right before we had to leave for our flight back home we could celebrate the inauguration.
Pictures, Pictures, Pictures
Of course we have plenty of pictures from our fourth trip and the completed bridge. We put them together and published the result on our project's homepage gallery. (go to gallery)
Have fun watching it!
Thank youThis project would have never been possible without the support of so many of you. Therefore we want to gratefully thank you.
Foremost thanks to Damaso Martinez, who acted as our Peruvian contact person during the whole project. He has organised so much and went so often to Tres Unidos to check the stage of construction works, that without him the whole thing would have been unthinkable.
Thanks to all the employees of Alpin Technik und Ingenieurservice GmbH too, who, next to their jobs, spent many hours of spare time and vacation on the project and who also privately donated a reasonable share of the costs.
We are exeptional grateful for all the support, we got from clients, partners and friends, who either donated money or provided their services for free.
The charities "Bridges to Prosperity" and " Lions Club Leipzig e.V." allowed us to use their organisational structures and gave us valuable advice in many ways. Thank you very much for sharing your experience with us.
Last but not least we want to send very very special thanks to all those, whom we do not know but who helped and supported us, when most of our equipment (laptop, money, papers) was stolen at Lima airport during the third visit. We owe you the fact, that we had not to learn the hard way too much.
Many thanks to all of you!
Plautstraße 80, 04179 Leipzig
www.tresunidos.alpintechnik.de