the-excavation-is-done-or-i-hope-i-never-see-another-rock-ever

Another day is in the books and we ended up on schedule completing …well, a big rocky hole. There are a couple of little spots that will have to be smoothed out by hand but we are ready to start putting in…count ‘em…8 tons of rebar, tomorrow. All and all things went well with the help of Brian Sitton Construction (thanks Brian and Whit), getting a hole in the rock to the right depth and level and square is always difficult but it looks great. Tower guys are always ready to get out of the earth and into the sky! Onward.

Excavation Complete…minus some rock

1st Day of construction

Hi! We are building a 200′ FM radio tower for Bible Broadcasting Network based out of North Carolina. The site is WDYN and it is replacing an existing 40 year old tower in Walden Tennessee. Walden is located on Signal Mountain which is a 1500′ hunk of sandstone with a sprinkling of dirt on the top which always makes excavation of foundations a wildcard. This hole was no exception. We had a geotechnical analysis done in which we bored one test hole and it showed that we had 3′ of dirt before we got to the rock. That held true in a lot of the hole BUT unfortunately there were a few large shelves of rock that jutted up into our excavation space. We were able to get all of the soil out of our 30’X30’X3′ hole with a back hoe but we had to bring in an excavator with a large hammer called a hoe ram that is like a massive hydraulic jack hammer. We got a lot of rock out but it is going to take at least a few more hours to get it all.

Above is the hole after the soil is out, on the left you can see one shelf of rock. This has to go!

Here is the hoe ram at work…it is kind of slow going and very loud.

Here is what things looked like at the end of the day. A lot of progress. After we finished we covered the excavation dirt with 4mil plastic to avoid runoff in case it rains. We surrounded everything down hill with a silt fence and at the lowest corner we also put in 12 bales of hay in order to catch any silt runoff. Hopefully it will stay dry.

Above is the whole site, you can see the existing tower and the building as well. The old tower will be dismantled after we move the antennas and transmission lines .