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Green building modifications

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 With more emphasis being put on the sustainability of structures, engineers and designers have to look at innovative ways of greening up buildings. Finding more sustainable material sources, including recycled plastic in structural concrete mix like I talked about in a previous post, is important and can make a difference. But we can get more out of the building space and finding effective, aesthetic ways of lowering the environmental impact and increasing sustainability. One option is to introduce more green rooftops. I've notice recently that many rooftops of flat buildings, primarily commercial and industrial buildings, are covered in gravel, which is done to protect the roof material and also weigh it down to keep everything on there . But this can also be done by using the power of plant roots and building green roofs. Instead of wasting the space, roofs can be made into gardens, and provide the same protection of the roofing materials with dirt, gravel, and plant roots. This...
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Helicopters in construction

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 While working on a mock construction project scheduling assignment for a theoretical Denver Winter Olympics ski resort, I learned that helicopters are actually regularly used in construction for large structure transport. Even if these projects do not happen often, ski resorts sometimes rely on helicopters to move the large, sometimes 100+ foot tall ski lift towers into the resort, onto the slope, and into place along the lift line.  With learning about a lot of the heavy equipment used on construction projects, like cranes and excavators, it is awesome to learn about the aerial equipment that is sometimes necessary to get structures standing up. Below are two of the common types of helicopters used for these complex installations. (video of tower removal)
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High alpine construction

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 Living in Colorado, it's cool to think about how high up in elevation we can build structures and homes and even livable towns. I love traveling to Leadville, being not just a cool town but the highest incorporated town in the country. You have to drive a windy mountain pass nearly 2 miles above sea level to get there from any direction. It's in the valley of 14,000 ft mountains, including Elbert, the second tallest mountain in the Lower 48 (shown in the picture below). The town is great and has everything you need and isn't all to hard to breath or function at, 10,152 ft above sea level. But go up higher than that, and it gets challenging to build. I attended a presentation on the structures sitting atop Pikes Peak last year, and was impressed by the huge obstacles they had to overcome. With a gift store and small power building and continuing construction (kind of annoying if you're hiking in the wilderness for 5 hours uphill only to reach a taped off construction si...
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The absence of construction on South Table Mountain

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 Driving by South Table Mountain and the mesa behind it in Golden, I almost always wonder why they don't put any buildings up there. Considering that Denver is already tightly packed and expanding, and that Golden too is short on space and expensive to live in, I didn't see why they couldn't put houses up there. I looked at a map and saw the much of golden was completely empty space, and was accessible by dirt road, in order to get build and maintain the power lines up there. I talked to one of my civil major classmates about it, and she explained that they tried in the past, or at least tested it out, and the soil is just not stable enough. After doing the hike many times after a rain or snowmelt, I understand just how hard it would be to build on this. Even on the elevated, flat mesa, there would surely be plenty of foundation issues to combat. With most of the area currently being open space reserved for wildlife (though I do have to say there is not much there, coming f...
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Denver Central 70 Project

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 I was lucky enough to get an amazing site tour from the project manager of the Denver Central I-70 project a year ago, when construction had already been well under way. The project's goal is to put I-70 underground east of Brighton Blvd, in order to connect the surrounding communities. Right now the highway completely cuts off both sides from each other and makes for a less inviting area. But the goal of Denver and Kiewit-Meridiam is the move the cars underground, right under the current highway, and build a park (shown in the first picture) to really improve the community feel and connect the neighborhoods. The progress made of the course of a few months can be seen in the next two pictures. These pictures below were from my own personal site visit in February, underneath the current highway and looking into the new road. It's amazing to see all of the temporary construction that must be done, including the bridge in the last picture, to accommodate traffic and move material...
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Recycling plastic in concrete

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 I love to see when engineers can be more efficient and sustainable while still providing nearly as high of quality products. I hope that civil engineers continue to push for more sustainable design in both material and structure. I learned about the concept of plastic roads made from recycling materials a few years ago (pictured below) and thought it was awesome how it could reduce waste, shorten installation and shutdown time, provide practical drainage, and reduce heats effects with different color to in turn increase lifespan. I was disappointed to learn there's some issues right now, like with strength when semi's or heavy equipment use them, but there is some use of them starting in different areas .  It is cool to hear that recylced plastic for use in structural concrete is a practical idea, and is being researched at Mines by Prof. Reza Heyadat and also at MIT - Students fortify concrete with plastic .
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Cranes

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 I've learned a lot about cranes this semester and have become a lot more fascinated seeing them using on construction sites. After seeing multiple crane failures like the one below in Chicago, I better understand the limitations of cranes as well as the efficiency they provide. I first learned about cranes in my intro to engineering class in high school, and how they needed to balance strength with reach/radius in order to carry heavy loads but also move them around large worksites. To understand it we built a paper and string and toothpick crane. My group failed to realize the weakness of these materials with any kind of decent reach. The winning team had a very short, thick crane arm. I am glad that we have steel to be able to build functional cranes for the actual construction projects. It was really cool to watch Heavy Lift Engineering present on all the different types of cranes during a Mines ASCE meeting. It was especially cool to see stuff like what was done in the picture...
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