HISYORY OF TECHNICS

HOOVER DAM

Contents

Planning and agreements

Contractors
Construction
Groundwork
River diversion
Rock clearance
Concrete
Architectural style
Construction deaths
Construction artifacts
Operation
Power plant
Power distribution
Spillways
Environmental impact
Use for road transport

Planning and agreements

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Hoover Dam, once known as Boulder Dam, is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the
Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border between the U.S. states of Arizona
and Nevada. When completed in 1936, it was both the world's largest hydroelectric power
generating station and the world's largest concrete structure. It was surpassed in both
these respects by the Grand Coulee Dam in 1945. It is currently the world's 35th-largest
hydroelectric generating station.
The first attempt to gain Congressional approval for construction of
Boulder Dam came in 1922 with the introduction of two bills in the House of
Representatives and the Senate. The bills were introduced by Congressman Phil D. Swing
and Senator Hiram W. Johnson and were known as the Swing-Johnson bills. The bills
failed to come up for a vote and were subsequently reintroduced several times. In
December 1928, both the House and the Senate finally approved the bill and sent it to the
President for approval. On December 21, 1928, President Calvin Coolidge signed the bill
approving the Boulder Canyon Project. The initial appropriation for construction was
made in July 1930, by which time Herbert Hoover had become President.
Early plans called for the dam to be built in Boulder Canyon, so the project was
known as the Boulder Canyon Project. The dam site was eventually moved downstream
eight miles (13 km) to Black Canyon, but the project name remained the same. A major
motive for relocating to Black Canyon was that a dam at Boulder Canyon would not have
provided sufficient physical control of the river below the damsitethe area of what is
called the Boulder basin. Black Canyon provided a better total control of the river that far
downstream.

Sketch of proposed damsite & reservoir

Herbert Hoover

Contractors
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The contract to build the Boulder

Dam was awarded to Six Companies,
Inc. on March 11, 1931, a joint venture
of Morrison-Knudsen Company of
Boise, Idaho; Utah Construction
Company of Ogden, Utah; Pacific
Bridge Company of Portland, Oregon;
Henry J. Kaiser & W. A. Bechtel
Company of Oakland, California;
MacDonald & Kahn Ltd. of Los
Angeles; and the J.F. Shea Company of
Portland, Oregon. The chief executive
of Six Companies, Frank Crowe, had
previously invented many of the
techniques used to build the dam.
During the concrete-pouring and
curing portion of construction, it was
necessary to circulate refrigerated
water through tubes in the concrete.
This was to remove the heat generated
by the chemical reactions that solidify
the concrete, since the setting and
curing of the concrete was calculated
to take about 125 years if cooling was not done. Six Companies, Inc, did much of this
work, but it discovered that such a large refrigeration project was beyond its expertise.
Hence, the Union Carbide Corporation was contracted to assist with the refrigeration
needs.
Six Companies, Inc. was contracted to build a new town called Boulder City for
workers, but the construction schedule for the dam was accelerated in order to create
more jobs in response to the onset of the Great Depression, and the town was not ready
when the first dam workers arrived at the site in early 1931. During the first summer of
construction, workers and their families were housed in temporary camps like Ragtown
while work on the town progressed. Discontent with Ragtown and dangerous working
conditions at the dam site led to a strike on August 8, 1931. Six Companies responded by
sending in strike-breakers with guns and clubs, and the strike was soon quelled. But the
discontent prompted the authorities to speed up the construction of Boulder City, and by
the spring of 1932 Ragtown had been deserted. Gambling, drinking alcohol, and
prostitution were not permitted in Boulder City during the period of construction. To this
day Boulder City is one of only two locations in Nevada not to allow gambling, and the
sale of alcohol was illegal until 1969.
While working in the tunnels, many workers suffered from the carbon monoxide
generated by the machinery there. The contractors claimed that the sickness was
pneumonia and was not their responsibility. When Nevada officials tried to enforce state
mining air-quality laws, the contractors took them to court. Officially, only 96 workers
died constructing Hoover Dam. Some of the workers sickened and died because of the
so-called "pneumonia". Most are uncounted on the official death list."The Bureau of
Reclamations fatality statistics show that 42 deaths were attributed to pneumonia during
the construction period, more than any other cause."In January, 1936, the Six Companies
made out-of-court settlements, in undisclosed amounts, with fifty gas-suit plaintiffs
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Construction

diagram of parts of the operation

Hoover Dam architectural plans

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Overview Of dam mechanisms

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Groundwork
To protect the construction site from flooding, two cofferdams were constructed.
Construction of the upper cofferdam began in September 1932, even though the river had
not yet been diverted. A temporary horseshoe-shaped dike protected the cofferdam on the
Nevada side of the river. After the Arizona tunnels were completed, and the river
diverted, the work was completed much faster. Once the cofferdams were in place and the
construction site dewatered, excavation for the dam foundation began. For the dam to rest
on solid rock, it was necessary to remove all the riverbed's accumulated erosion soils and
other loose materials until sound bedrock was reached. Work on the foundation
excavations was completed in June 1933. During excavations for the foundation,
approximately 1,500,000 cubic yards (1,150,000 m3) of material was removed. Since the
dam would be a gravity-arch type, the side-walls of the canyon would also bear the force
of the impounded lake. Therefore the side-walls were excavated too, to reach virgin (unweathered) rock which had not experienced the weathering of centuries of water seepage,
wintertime freeze cracking, and the heating/cooling cycles of the Arizona/Nevada desert.

River diversion
To divert the river's flow around the construction site, four diversion tunnels were
driven through the canyon walls, two
on the Nevada side and two on the
Arizona side. These tunnels were 56
feet (17 m) in diameter. Their
combined length was nearly 16,000
ft (4,900 m) or more than 3 mi (4.8
km). Tunneling began at the lower
portals of the Nevada tunnels in May
1931. Shortly afterwards, work
began on two similar tunnels in the
Arizona canyon wall. In March
1932, work began on lining the
tunnels with concrete. First the base, or invert, was poured. Gantry cranes, running on
rails through the entire length of each tunnel were used to place the concrete. The
sidewalls were poured next. Movable sections of steel forms were used for the sidewalls.
Finally, using pneumatic guns, the overheads were filled in. The concrete lining is 3 ft
(0.91 m) thick, reducing the finished tunnel diameter to 50 ft (15 m).
Following the completion of the dam, the entrances to the two outer diversion
tunnels were sealed at the opening and half way through the tunnels with large concrete
plugs. The downstream halves of the tunnels following the inner plugs are now the main
bodies of the spillway tunnels.

Rock clearance
The two vertical foundations for each of the arch walls (the Nevada side and
Arizona side) had to be founded on sound virgin rock; free of cracks and the weathering
that the surface rock of the canyon walls had from thousands of years of weathering and
exposure.

The men who removed this rock were called high-scalers. While suspended from
the top of the canyon with ropes high-scalers climbed down the canyon walls and
removed the loose rock with jackhammers and dynamite.

Concrete
The first concrete was
placed into the dam on June
6, 1933. Since no structure
of the magnitude of the
Hoover Dam had been
constructed, many of the
procedures used in
construction of the dam
were untried. Since
concrete heats up and
contracts as it cures, uneven
cooling and contraction of
the concrete posed a serious
problem. The Bureau of
Reclamation engineers
calculated that if the dam
were built in a single continuous pour, the concrete would have taken 125 years to cool to
ambient temperature. The resulting stresses would have caused the dam to crack and
crumble. To solve this problem the dam was built in a series of interlocking trapezoidal
concrete pours. To further cool the concrete each form contained cooling coils of 1 inch
(25 mm) thin-walled steel pipe. River water was circulated through these pipes to help
dissipate the heat from the curing concrete. After this, chilled water from a refrigeration
plant on the lower cofferdam was circulated through the coils to further cool the concrete.
After each layer had sufficiently cooled, the cooling coils were cut off and pressure
grouted by pneumatic grout guns. The concrete is still curing and gaining in strength as
time goes on.
There is enough concrete in the dam to pave a two-lane highway from San
Francisco to New York.

Architectural style
The dam crosses the border between two time zones, the Pacific Time Zone and
the Mountain Time Zone.
The initial plans for the finished facade of both the dam and the power plant
consisted of a simple, unadorned wall of concrete topped with a Gothic-inspired
balustrade and a powerhouse that looked like little more than an industrial warehouse.
[citation needed] This initial design was criticized by many as being too plain and
unremarkable for a project of such immense scale, so Los Angeles-based architect
Gordon B. Kaufmann was brought in to redesign the exteriors Kaufmann greatly
streamlined the buildings, and applied an elegant Art Deco style to the
entire project, with sculptured turrets rising seamlessly from the dam face and clock faces
on the intake towers set for the time in Nevada and Arizona, in the Pacific Standard Time
Zone or Pacific Daylight Time Zone and Mountain Standard Time Zone time zones
respectively (although because Arizona does not observe daylight saving time, the two
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clocks show the same time during the half of

the year around the northern summer).
One of two "Winged Figures of the
Republic" by Oskar J.W. Hansen, part of the
monument of dedication on the Nevada side
of the dam.
At Kaufmanns behest, Denver artist
Allen Tupper True was brought on board to
handle the design and decoration of the
walls and floors of the new dam. True
conceived of incorporating motifs of the
Navajo and Pueblo tribes of the
region.Although some initially were
opposed to these designs, True was given the
go-ahead and was officially appointed
Consulting Artist.[citation needed] With the
assistance of the National Laboratory of
Anthropology, True researched authentic
decorative motifs from Indian sand
paintings, weavings, baskets and ceramics
The images and colors are based on Native American visions of rain, lightning, water,
clouds, local animals-lizards, serpents, birds-and on the Southwestern landscape of
stepped mesas. In these works which are integrated into the walkways and interior halls
of the great dam, True also reflected on the machinery of the operation making the
symbolic patterns at once appear both ancient and
modern.
These Native American motifs, embedded in the
terrazzo floors, look like the cogs of the giant
turbines, yet they are distinctly American Indian in
origin. For True, the shapes and designs associated
with the American Indians were akin to those of the
ancient Greeks and Romans. Trues designs played
well off Kaufmanns monumental architecture and it
could be said that together they created an American
temple to modernity.
With the agreement of architect Kaufmann and the
engineers, True also devised an innovative color
coding for the pipes and machinery, which would be
implemented throughout all the Federal Bureau of
Reclamation projects. Trues Consulting Artist job
lasted through 1942 and was extended so that he also
completed design work for the Parker, Shasta and
Grand Coulee dams and power plants. At the time,
Trues work on the Boulder Dam was humorously noted in a poem which appeared in the
New Yorker magazine, part of which read, lose the spark, and justify the dream; but also
worthy of remark will be the color scheme.

Construction deaths
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There were 112 deaths associated with the construction of the dam. There are different
accounts as to how many people died while working on the dam and who was the first
and last to die. A popular story holds that the first person to die in the construction of
Hoover Dam was J. G. Tierney, a surveyor who drowned while looking for an ideal spot
for the dam. Coincidentally, his son, Patrick W. Tierney, was the last man to die working
on the dam, 13 years to the day later. Ninety-six of the deaths occurred during
construction at the site.

Operation
Power plant
Two intake towers on the Arizona side.
Water flowing from Lake Mead through the
gradually-narrowing penstocks to the
powerhouse reaches a speed of about 85 mph
(137 km/h) by the time it reaches the turbines.
The entire flow of the Colorado River passes
through the turbines (except for seepage
around the edges of the dam through the semiporous volcanic rock it rests against). The
spillways are rarely used.

The hydroelectric generators at Hoover dam

Following an uprating project from 1986 to 1993, the total
gross power rating for the plant, including two 2.4
megawatt[citation needed] electric generators that power the
plant's operations, is about 2080 megawatts.
Excavation for the powerhouse was carried out
simultaneously with the excavation for the dam foundation
and abutments. Excavation for the U-shaped structure
located at the downstream toe of the dam was completed in
late 1933 with the first concrete placed in November 1933.
Generators at the Dam's Hoover Powerplant began
transmission of electricity from the Colorado River to Los
Angeles, California 266 miles (428 km) away on October 26, 1936. Additional generating
units were added through 1961. Original plans called for 16 large generators, 8 on each
side of the river (see architectural illustrations) but two smaller generators were installed
instead of one of the large ones on the Arizona side, for a total of 17. The smaller
generators were used to serve smaller municipalities at a time when the output of each
generator was dedicated to a municipality, before the dam's total power output was placed
on the grid and made arbitrarily distributable.

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Power distribution
The Bureau of Reclamation reports that the energy generated is allocated as follows:
Area
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California
State of Nevada
State of Arizona
Los Angeles, California
Southern California Edison Company
Boulder City, Nevada
Glendale, California
Pasadena, California
Anaheim, California
Riverside, California
Vernon, California
Burbank, California
Azusa, California
Colton, California
Banning, California

Percentage
28.5393%
23.3706%
18.9527%
15.4229%
5.5377%
1.7672%
1.5874%
1.3629%
1.1487%
0.8615%
0.6185%
0.5876%
0.1104%
0.0884%
0.0442%

Spillways
The dam is protected against overtopping by two spillways. The spillway
entrances are located behind each dam abutment, running roughly parallel to the canyon
walls. This spillway entrance arrangement forms a classic side-flow weir. Water flowing
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over the spillways drops sharply into spillway tunnels and connects to part of the
construction diversion tunnels, and reenters the main river channel below the dam. This
complex spillway entrance arrangement combined with the approximate 700 ft (210 m)
elevation drop from the top of the reservoir to the river below is a difficult engineering
problem and poses several design challenges. The overall spillway capacity was
empirically verified in post construction tests in 1941. This test also showed that the
spillway tunnels could be damaged from cavitation created by the high velocity flow
when running near full volume. After further damage was incurred during use in six
weeks in the summer of 1983, the tunnel linings were repaired and the spillway tunnel
design was modified to minimize cavitation potential.
The large spillway tunnels have only been used three times in the history of the
dam. In addition to use in 1941 and 1983, spillway use was required in 1999 when heavy
precipitation in the watershed filled Lake Mead.

Environmental impact
Hoover Dam and its
associated changes in water
use had devastating impact
on the Colorado River
Delta at the mouth of the
Colorado River. The
construction of the dam has
been pointed to as the
beginning of an era of
decline of this estuarine
ecosystem. For six years in
the late 1930s, after the
construction of the dam and
while Lake Mead filled,
virtually no flow of water
reached the mouth of the
river. The delta's estuary,
which once had a freshwater-saltwater mixing zone stretching 65 kilometres (40 mi)
south of the river's mouth, was turned into an inverse estuary where the level of salinity
was actually higher closer to the river's mouth.
Looking upstream from Hoover Dam in July 2009, the water level has decreased
drastically.

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The Colorado River had experienced natural flooding before the construction of
the Hoover Dam. The dam eliminated the natural flooding, which imperiled many species
adapted to the flooding, including both plants and animals.
The construction of the dam decimated the populations of native fish in the river
downstream from the dam. Four species of fish native to the Colorado River, the Bonytail
chub, Colorado pikeminnow, Humpback chub, and Razorback sucker, are currently listed
as endangered by the U.S. federal government.

Use for road transport

U.S. Highway 93 on Hoover Dam

There are two lanes for automobile traffic across the top of the dam. It serves as the
Colorado River crossing for the highway U.S. Route 93. The two-lane section of road
approaching the dam is narrow, has several dangerous hairpin turns, and is subject to rock
slides.

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Hoover Dam Bypass

To provide much more highway capacity, and better safety, the new Hoover Dam
Bypass is scheduled to be completed in 2010 and it will divert the U.S. 93 traffic 1,500 ft
(460 m) downstream from the dam. The bypass will include a composite steel and
concrete arch bridge, tentatively named the Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial
Bridge. Once the bypass is completed, through traffic will no longer be allowed across
Hoover Dam.
Additionally, in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks there are
significant security concerns. Because of the attack, the Hoover Dam Bypass project was
expedited. Traffic across Hoover Dam is presently restricted. Some types of vehicles are
inspected prior to crossing the dam while semi-trailer trucks, buses carrying luggage, and
enclosed-box trucks over 40 feet (12 m) long are not allowed on the dam at all.[34] That
traffic is diverted south to a Colorado River bridge at Laughlin, Nevada.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY
www.wikipedia.com
http://www.sunsetcities.com/hoover-dam.html
http://www.hooverdambypass.org/

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