Culverts

It never ceases to amaze me when traveling the roads in the Horsefly area. Recent upgrading of the Walters Lake road is a case in point.

Not being an engineer, I can only give my opinion of the materials used in "rebuilding" the road. This will have to be the topic of an other post, probably this spring.

As I understand it, after they had part of the road reconstructed, the crew from Williams Lake came down with some new culverts and proceeded to dig up the new works and put in the culverts. Makes sense! As I stated above I am not an engineer but when I see culverts installed like this, even I know there will be trouble when the spring run off happens. As a matter of fact with the last melt there was evidence that this was going to happen.

If who ever is in charge of decision making is not sure of what should be done when installing culverts, there is a wealth of information on the web. I suggest that someone should look at it. I believe that this information is also available in the Ministry guide lines as well.

One last culvert shot: Has anyone taken a look at the recently "fixed" culvert at Malcome Creek on the 108 Rd? I will have some pictures of these sites in a later post.

Bells Lake Road - Culverts part 2 or 3

Well I went and had a look at the culverts recently installed that I mentioned in a recent post. Here I thought that they had removed the old ones and installed 2 new ones! Why they would do that in the first place was a bit of a mystery to me. However I was not disappointed? They actually added 2 more culverts. That makes 4 to handle spring time run off during a 2 week period. See below:
You will note in the above picture the 4 culverts. This picture is taken on the exit side and you will note that the marked culvert actually runs up hill. I wonder if this is an engineering feature. I also wonder if the maintenance folks mistook the direction of flow. You will note that his area is well cleared. Now take a look at the entrance side of the road.


The normal procedure in road construction is that a catchment basin is dug in this area. Now I sure everyone knows why?
1. It gives the water a place to gather where it will eventually rise and begin to flow through the culverts. A natural flow control if you will. Come on folks this is not rocket science.
2. A catchment basin also is a place where flotsam will gather which can be cleaned out easily.


As you can see here, there should be some trouble this spring

This must also be an engineering feature. Place the culvert up high enough and it should take only a little water.

I had a look at the old culverts and they both had mud in them. In short they did not appear to have been cleaned out.

Now all this leads to several questions:

1. Was this installation engineered:
2. Why did they not pull the 2 old culverts out and replace them with a larger single culvert with a welded wire screen at the inlet
end. They could have reused the old culverts and still have 2 nice new shinny ones left to use.
3. Does anyone know what the average flow rate is during flooding. This would determine the size of culvert needed!
4. What is the size of the catchment area. This information would also help to determine what size of culvert would be needed.

I suppose we should be thankful that this was done. Only the coming spring run off will determine if it was done right.

Our tax dollars at work. In these severe economic times it is comforting to know that a great deal of thought is going into the maintenance of our roads.

More to come. It's a never ending source of discussion.

Work Safe?

A friend was travelling to Williams Lake along Bells Lake road a couple of weeks ago. He came across a workers sign on the side of the road approximately 7kms from the 108 Road. The local highways group had the road block and were replacing culverts which I have mentioned in past posts. There were no signs at 108 Road Junction or the Horsefly Road/Bells Lake road junction. As My friend was travelling to a Drs. appointment he had to turn around and go the long way to Williams Lake. While waiting at the road block, no employee made any attempt to come to him to inform him how long it would be. I wonder what would have happened it a logging truck or a cattle truck was using the road at that time?

It was also pointed out that there were no flag persons and that none of the workers were waring hard hats. I wonder if they had correct footware. What was happening was they dug up the old culvers and replaced them with nice shinny new ones. The back hoe operator tried to move the back hoe a few feet to hook up the culverts to swing them into place. He could not move the back hoe because he left the stabalizers down as well as the bucket digging into ground. It took him a bit before he figured it out.

Now the questions that I have are:

1. Why was the road not blocked off at the main junctions?
2. Why were there no flag persons?
3. How come no one had safety gear on?
4. Why was there no public notice of this project?

I wonder what Work Safe BC would have to say about this little project

Now I have not had a good look at the installation other then a quick drive by so will not comment at this time. When I get a chance I will do a good look and take some pictures. At least we now have some "unplugged" culverts at this time. The proof of the pudding will be, of course, this coming spring.

All for now .... Any comments?

Culverts?

Things seem to have dried up fairly well and some maintenance to the roads is underway. In my last post I mentioned that the Highways dept. has turned down request for culverts for this area??????? Now I want to show you a culvert on the Bells Lake Road.

If you have been following this blog, you will have seen some pictures of Bells Lake road in my Apr 15 post. The following pictures and comments relate to this area.

After the wash out and flooding the highways group put down some decent gravel and did a fairly nice job, particularly in relation to the previous years repair (?).




Take a look at the picture above. What you see is a damaged culvert. Do you think that this had anything to do with the flooding? Although it is not evident in the photo, the broken piece is laying in the mud.


You get a better idea what the catchment area looks like in this photo. Also note the angles of the 2 culverts. Hmmmmm!

In this photo, the other side of the road, the culverts are some what parallel although they do not appear to be the same hight. Is this an engineering decision? Also if the culverts are parallel on this side of the road and not so on the other side what does that tell you?



Now take a look at this rather blown out photo of the current running out of the culverts. The one on the right is moving a fair volume of water while the one on the left is moving very little. What does that tell you?

This should be an alert that the culverts and the catchment area's on these and ALL other culverts need to be attended to. I would suggest in a month or two would be ideal times as the water level should be at it's lowest. BEFORE WINTER PLEASE.

I have mentioned before that it appears that there is not a maintenance plan in place. It would be nice if I am wrong but it appears that I nor others will never know. It is absolutely amazing what a little communications can do. Let us know, Highways, what you are doing and what you plan for the year. We have a number of print media that I'm sure would be happy to print such information.

Until next time