I Can See Clearly Now, the Haze is Gone

The sun came out and melted about a foot of snow.  That's a lot of melting.  I mentioned a few days ago that the Daily Herald published an article about the finished design of the temple.  In studying that, I am wondering if the basement will need to be deeper.  I'll just keep watching.

It's fun to see the tabernacle on stilts.  I'll never get tired of this.  Work on bracing the piers continues.

What a beautiful building this is! 

I noticed some snowmelt under the northeast corner.

I zoomed in for a closer look.  I doubt this is temple standard quality for a font.

Machines can move freely underneath the tabernacle because the piles of dirt are out.

The dirt is, once more, being removed from the north lot.

Notice that one of the track hoes was quite comfortable as King of the Hill.

Something is happening in the northwest corner.  Looks like the retaining wall sprang a leak.

It was a beautiful day to be working at the site, compared to earlier this week.  Notice at the right side of the photo someone's red jacket is hanging on the retaining wall.  I took my coat off, too.  

It looked like something serious was happening on the south side.  I zoomed in to see what they were doing.  I don't think the machine is a drill rig, but I know enough to notice the supports behind the rear tires.  This machine was lifting something up and down.

I think they are testing the slurry curtain.

At first I thought these pipes were part of a fence on the south lot near the buried slurry curtain, but now I'm wondering if this is related to the testing.  Hopefully my engineering family members will weigh in soon.

Trenching Almost Complete, Maybe

The sun came out just for a few minutes this afternoon as I arrived at the site.  The trencher is now on the south side, and you can see the trench it has dug, similar to the one it dug yesterday on the north.  Notice the empty bags of cement.

I checked the north lot to see that trench, and if I hadn't watched the trencher work, I wouldn't know what had happened.  The slag, which is my word, has been totally scraped off, leaving no trace above ground of the massive work which happened here yesterday.  My engineer husband who looked at the pictures when I got home, speculated that the pile of dirt at the end of the trench is what was scraped up.

This small track hoe had just finished digging a trench on the west side.  Notice the hose  in the corner.

As soon as the trench was completed, this lift began dumping Bentonite into the trench.  You can see that the trench isn't very deep -- the workman is standing in the trench.  I was concerned that he was breathing in the Bentonite, but my husband says it's a clay that many people believe has health benefits.   I wondered why the trench on the west side was only three feet deep, while the trench on the north and south sides is probably twenty feet deep.  We speculated that the reason has something to do with the underground parking lot which will be built on the west side.  Notice the hose from the pump heading north.  If you look carefully, you can see it snaking around along the south side of the tabernacle.

As soon as the Bentonite was dropped in the trench, the little front end loader covered the trench.

I took this broad picture to show the hose.  It snakes from the pump just barely seen on the right hand side, up and around the west trench, and then back along the south side to the trencher.  I noticed that all the lights which had been at the site for two days were gone.  I am wondering if the trencher worked all night long Tuesday to dig a deep slurry curtain on the east side.  The position of the hose is a clue that indicates this might have happened.  Only recently was it disconnected from the trencher as it completed its work on the east side, and then walked back around the tabernacle and reconnected to the trencher.

The trencher and the hose and the new trench can been seen in this picture.  The trencher was taking a little break while I was at the site.  

This track hoe was repairing the east side after the trencher crossed it, likely leaving a big mess.  I think this area is too narrow for a slurry curtain to have been dug.

Everyone stays busy at the site.  There is no lollygagging.

I wonder if one of the workmen choreographs the track hoes.

This new trench will keep the basement of the new temple dry.

I Lost My Husband at the Construction Site

I made a quick trip to the construction site this morning to see if the preparations I saw yesterday were amounting to anything.

A new machine was in place, and it was big and noisy.  I took a few pictures and then drove back to my house.  My engineer husband works from home, so I showed him this picture and asked him what he thought the machine was doing.  He googled Dewind and watched a couple movies on their site.  He suggested we go back together.  So, after lunch, we put on our heaviest coats, got our gloves, and I grabbed the camera.

My husband was in heaven.  He's been to the site before, but it's not always this busy.  He explained a few things.  The machine which was dragged into place yesterday, on the right side, is a pump.  

A chemical of some kind is being dropped into the hopper on the pump and mixed with water.

The good thing about engineers is they have to figure everything out.  The pump is fed water from a line that came from this offsite fire hydrant.  I know that because we hunted it down.

The trencher worked today on the north side.  The line running to it comes all the way from the pump.  It feeds into the grey hopper.

The track hoe dropped frequent packages of some kind of cement into this hopper.  He put the entire bag in, and the grinder in the bottom of the hopper chopped the bag open so the stuff could fall in.

The trencher was powerful.  When it worked, it shook the parking garage where we were standing.

My husband watched for a long time.  He believes a very deep trench down is being dug by this machine, and then it is filled with a slurry.  After some internet searching, he believes the chemical being added is Bentonite clay to make the new underground wall watertight. 

The trencher had some problems today, and part of the time we were there we saw a few repairs.  But when it was working, it moved about a foot a minute.  It was exciting to watch!

A couple times the trencher got stuck, so the track hoe nudged it.  Seriously.
Think of a mother elephant and her baby.

We also watched the workmen deal with problems with the line.  You can see what happened here -- the line froze.  Not the only line that has frozen in Provo lately!  They grabbed a propane torch and thawed it.

Here's the trencher getting another nudge from the track hoe.  The machines in the background zoomed in and out and all around, constantly.

The trench goes from just west of the tabernacle and was approaching the east side while we watched.   This type of trench is called a grout curtain or a slurry wall.

The trencher wasn't the only machine working today -- not by any means!  This old favorite of mine was digging up a parking lot near the former First South.

You might have noticed that the northeast and southwest corners have been excavated deeper than the other two corners.  Provo's local paper, The Daily Herald, ran a short article on the stilts.

The piers are cleaned, as I mentioned yesterday, and then additional supports are being welded in place.

It appears that these supports will be part of the framework for a new foundation.

I took this picture this morning.  Likely this type of work will be completed all around the foundation, but the other two corners won't be completely excavated until these two are strengthened.  I learned that the idea is to "Not give away any support."  There might be a Sacrament Meeting talk in this concept.

A stairway has been built from the excavated portion of the north lot up to the ground level near Center Street.

There was so much to see today at the site!  My good husband didn't want to leave, even after two hours, even though my toes were frozen, and even though I had to go to Relief Society tonight.

Temple on Stilts

Excavation underneath the tabernacle is deepening.

I took company today to see the site, and I was surprised at the progress in the last two days.
It was still bitter cold, about 10 degrees, although the sun was shining.

Notice how the tops of the piers are braced together, and look at the angled interior piers.

I'm wondering just how big this pit is going to get.

With the sun out, (and shining directly through the absent roof,) it was easy to see what's going on.

I never tire of seeing track hoes working inside the tabernacle.

Excavation on the south lot continues, also.  Please don't worry that our mountains are missing.  Just a little haze, and probably only for another week...  I assure you, no Photoshop was used in this picture.

I have been noticing the construction of the wooden triangles which were placed above the I-beams.   Now they are being covered with orange sheeting.  I often take pictures from the parking garage shown on the left in this photo.  I'm told it will disappear in a few weeks.

There is some interesting bracing going on underneath the west side.

It looks like a new type of  pier has been placed with horizontal beams to connect with other piers.  This is where I need a structural engineer to explain what's going on.  Sadly, I have a whole family of chemical and electrical engineers and they aren't saying anything helpful.  My father was a structural engineer, and even if he didn't know what was happening, he'd make up something believable.  I'm not even getting that...

I'm moved to sing, "How Firm A Foundation."