One of my neighbors' road gets washed out every spring. He told me that the county would provide funding for raw material should he decide to put a bigger culvert in, or build a bridge. He should have known better than to ask a welder what he should do...............SO................
We now have commandeered some left over I-beam from an old bridge - 20" on the web, and 12" on the flange, all galvanized coated. I have no doubt that we can fab a bridge over the20 ft crevasse that will support a d9 Cat if need be. I am just needing input as to what safe way there is of shoring up the sides.
If I had enough funding, I would drive 12" or better casing in the ground and grout it on both sides of the gultch and feel real good about it. But we are like a one legged man in a butt kicking contest on this one. Concrete is out of the question since we are playing with an ever changing silt creek bed.
STUCK, like Chuck.
My neighbor is talking about burying semi wheels as deep as we can get with my backhoe, then welding some 12" casing to them for the supports. I don't see anything wrong with that, except when the water table erodes around the supports. I guess what I'm worried about is that we're going to have to make the bridge a complete self contained solid structure that wont give where it needs to under stress.........
Support the "Redneck Bridge Fund", with your suggestions. Thank you!
Your beams are certianly strong enough, Can you not set concrete above the silt area as normal practice would be to set your buttmens above that. I would as you have said dig in some pileings with your hoe build a form around them pour in some concrete back fill around them, if you have access to rock you could lay that in as rip rap so as not to wash away your form work. Lay your beams down and construct your sub deck with 2"X6" (pressure treated would be best) on end then you can lay the top deck down flat. It is hard to take short cuts when building bridges as mother nature has a nasty way of dealing with them. the ideal of the semi wheels sounds ok but make sure they are dug into solid ground .
Not really sure of your surroundings on this one but thought i would give it my best out of my mind shot lol.How about making some footings about ten feet away from the water point or banks.Throw up some columons an attact the bridge to that.Shoot (An im not making fun of your situation)Make it one of thoses bridges that raises an all.Then when the water comes just raise it up .Good luck sourdough
Beware: You may fall afoul of some state regulations that no one ever heard of. 20+ years ago, I helped bridge a forrest stream on my friend's property, using six used W27X84s X 56'. The same summer, some state officials in a helocipter saw it, and my friend had to go to court, pay a fine, take it down, and remediate the footing excavations. There was some rule about crossing streams, even on your own property! (Before the Bridge he had to ford the stream further down stream and That dammage was not against the law!)
Good comment Joseph. Check with Dept. of Fish and Game also.
I know you don't want the expense of concrete, but you might talk to your ready-mix supplier about providing a lean-concrete mix for backfill instead of backfilling with soil, which will require compaction for best results. You can limit the cement content in the lean concrete to make it "diggable" if you have to.
Bob
Thanks for the replies. This is funded and ok'd by the county, so I think we're alright. We're talking about a 15 foot span, and a 40 foot bridge, so I'm really thinking/hoping we'll be good on it. Just wanted some input. THANKS!
This may be coming out of left field, but the corp of engineers, and the army have the temporary steel bridges. If your worried about shifting silt and locations, you may can rob from that design.
hey sourdough , cwi555 is right try to web up bailey bridges and a newer version is alcrow bridges . they are in 10 ft. sections and pin together you can make any combination for weight rateings and many are mounted on sills eazy for combat engineers to install . when i was in a combat engineer unit we put in a 50 ton bridge across eagle river at ft. richardson . goods luck . willie
We have what we got..................now it's time to git er done.......
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