A Day in the Bottom of a Reservoir
How often do you get to say that you walked in the bottom of a reservoir?!! This is straight outta 20,000 leagues under the sea!
I asked that the other day as we were driving along the bottom. Our on-site construction inspector is, apparently, not into rhetorical questions and said "I try to get inside at least once a day". Err, okay, let me rephrase "How many people that aren't nearly as awesome as him get to walk inside a reservoir?!"
My day started out at 0430 after about 6 hours of sleep. We had a proposal due the previous night that kept me up fairly late. I had been so busy the day before that I had the rental car company deliver a car to my house. I had called them and they told me "sorry we're out of cars". Then I told him my company's name and he got cars transferred from other locations and then sent to my house. Perks of being with a large corporation.
I drove through rural Texas out to the reservoir site. This is one of the largest reservoirs in central Texas. It's a long drive past some zebras....
When I arrive on site I spend the morning in meetings in the construction trailer.
But then in the afternoons (sometimes) I borrow a truck and head out to see the construction progress.This is my hand-markup of the site using the plan view (engineering term for 'top view') of the site.
Right now, you can walk around in the bottom of the reservoir. There are roads and lots of weeds. Little trenches are dug into the bottom which we call 'borrow areas'. This is where they took sand from the bottom to build the sides of the reservoir.
One of the big question types that I studied for when I took my Professional Engineering exam was the 'cut and fill' question. This question is geared towards figuring out how much borrow soil you'd need for the embankment. It looks at how soil compacts (based on water moisture in the soil) and how many trucks you'd need to transfer the soil to the construction area. Are we looking at 100 dump trucks an hour or 100 dump trucks a week? How heavy are these trucks with the soil and water weight? Will they be too heavy for the local roads to support them?
You can find my notes from it here:Â http://andromedadumont.com/resources/
My drive home is full of these quaint little Texas houses.And even past this gas station which is the most Texas gas station I have ever seen. More so than Buckees which turns a profit (I assume) on selling shirts with their logos on it. I've been tempted to buy a shirt before. I also pass 2 Buckees.
I read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea out on a drilling rig once. I had to take samples every 5 minutes so I'd read one page at a time, take a monitoring well reading, read another page, and repeat. Thinking of walking under water in a steampunk suit makes me so happy!
Reading: Who Moved My Cheese? It was a fun little story (about an hour and a half audiobook) about being flexible and agile in your life. Me, a risk-adverse engineer, needed that!
Working: I'm orchestrating training for the operators at the reservoir. They will come to the site for a workshop on how-to-operate-the-reservoir. After startup (and filling) these are the people who will know the ins and outs of the reservoir. How to switch on/off different pumps and valves. How to drain it really fast in the case of an emergency. How to maintain all the equipment.
Listening: Korn Ferry - CEO Women Speaks podcast. It's making me so excited! https://engage.kornferry.com/womenceosspeak