After the holidays we started in Oostende with the as-built of the construction of a 36 KV high voltage cable. The cable is in fact 3 separate cables and an additional optical fiber, makes 4 cables in total)
We did the initial survey of 8 km. for the design in October 2008 and now we come back once in 3 weeks to survey each cable pull. It takes about 3 weeks for the constructor to prepare a trench of about 1 km. The cables come in pieces from about 1 km.
Our job is to survey the center of the trench when they're pulling the cable.
In some places where traffic will cross the cable they use casing.[The casing is an HDPE tube in that will protect the actual electric cable]
In other situations (canals, crossroads, railroads, ...) they use directional drilling's.
Second job is to survey all junctions where 2 cable pieces do connect, and finally we stake or measure the marker stones that will be placed about each 200 m. and on key points such as the begin and endpoints of the directional drilling's. It's always nice to come back for construction after the topo is done.
Then we moved to Zonnebeke, a new small subdivision project. Formerly there was a school on this site.
The city did build a new school so now these site gets another destination. We are three today, we have Johannes with us, an engineer student who has some training on the job for some weeks.
He's amazed by the speed of the survey process compared to their survey training at
school ... he's looking at 25 years of experience ... no way to compare, we started the same way long ago...
Last job we did is a check for a GIS sewage system around Erpe-Mere. We do a 5% check of the existing data before they input in the system. Data comes from the city sewage maps and from as-builds. We do check E,N,El, inverts and pipe sizes and all hydraulic constructions: overflow, in- & outlet, lift stations. Some match within cm, others don't and are off by 30 cm, these as-builds will be redone from scratch. Some of the sewage collectors run through the fields.
and are hard to find
For access to the lift stations we are assisted by a guy from Aquafin who owns the infrastructure. One of the lift stations had a leak and the dry pump room has to be cleared.
The overflow constructions have special square covers, piece of cake with the right tools from our Aquafin friend.
Today we did a bit of calculating and reporting at the office, tomorrow I'll start early at the golf court in 'De Haan' near the coast, a 1 hour job to take some water levels for our environment division. Looks promissing ...
Christof.
Shallow cables. Bet someone will be seeing them again before their design life time has passed. Do you find many munitions placed there in 1944 and 1945 that have never been picked up? I would be kind of delicate with my digging.
jud
What is the crop growing in the field that you are seen walking across?
Jud
indeed, depends a bit of how disturbed the soil already is but even farmers dig up yearly old WW I & II stuff by cultivating their fields. The army has a special division placed in Ypres, they collect and transport all the dangerous munition. If transport is to dangerous then the site will be evacuated for some hours for a controlled blast.
Holy Cow
It is the field of a gardener, these are young spruce. Many has them here as hedge work.
chr.
