Later in the morning, albert-jan came over and said that he was sending one of the guys from geomonitoring out to a sheet-pile driving site and asked if I would like to accompany. Uuuhhh… YES! I get to get out of the office! I wasn’t really dressed for the field, grey slacks with ballet-type shoes. I borrowed some steel-toe boots from patricia, but unfortunately I didn’t have any socks. Luckily, it was quite mild out today, and I really wasn’t that cold. I had a my regular shirt, a sweatshirt, my jacket, gloves, and scarf and was fine. I grabbed some sandwiches left over from breakfast and headed out to the site with Dylan.
Dylan was really cool and unassumingly funny. Once in awhile he’d just say these really great one-liners. He was in the rotation program, started off in my group with FIBV, then did his second rotation with the geomonitoring group and liked it so much he’s just stayed there. We chatted for awhile as we drove to the project site, about 45 minutes from the office.
The project is for a new residential building with below-grade parking, sandwiched inbetween two existing brick structures (homes). The project site is located where all the beautiful tulip fields bloom in April. Right now, just large areas of flat nothingness, all planted with tulip bulbs hibernating for the winter. In the spring the fields are so gorgeous. This new building will have a perfect view of the fields.
To excavate for the basement area, the contractor had installed most of the sheetpile retaining/cutoff wall. Vibrations induced from hammering the sheet piles into place had caused some distress to the adjacent structures, so work was halted by the county. The contractor changed the installation method such that the sheet pile locations would be pre-drilled, then sheets would be pushed into place. When we got to the site, we installed 3 vibration monitors on the adjacent structures. The program is really easy to use, simply enter the project name etc., the allowable vibration limit, and the monitoring period (every day 7am to 5Pm or whatever), and the results are automatically emailed from the monitoring device. Awesome! Unfortunately, the contractor only predrilled the locations today, and was having problems with some equipment, so I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see any action.
We got back to the office at about 5PM, and hit some really bad traffic on the way home. It seemed like it took forever!! I’ll meet Dylan at the jobsite at about 7:30-8AM tomorrow. I left work at about 6, headed home, changed quickly, then met Nel for dinner in Delft at 6:45PM. She took me to this fantastic Italian restaurant near the main square. I had the best Italian vegetable soup and some so-so lasagne. We chatted about matthew and debby’s upcoming trip and so many other things. She is such a great person and I really enjoyed spending the evening with her :) I got home around 9:45 and spent several hours finishing my Christmas cards (finally). I didn’t finish until almost 2AM. They will probably not get to the US in time, but oh well. I feel like people will be understanding considering the circumstances. The cards are pretty good this year. I tucked my yearly synopsis note inside of the front red pouch that says ‘seasons greetings’. Inside of the card there are a bunch of pictures of me from this past year. Then I sealed the red envelope with a cute ribbon sticker. Done!!
On Thursday I met Dylan at the project site in the morning. This contractor is sloooooooowwwww. Equipment is not working properly. Lots of coffee breaks. No one wears hard hats (except dylan and myself). Doesn’t seem to be any sense of urgency, or that ‘time is money’. Seems like they could finish the job whenever and that would be ok. It’s a much colder this morning but luckily I have socks on today :) nothing really happens until about 11AM when the pick up the first sheet pile. The pile is fed into a special piece of equipment that pushes it into place. The equipment is clamped onto some adjacent piles that are already in place. It hydraulically pushes the sheet vertically into the soil. Surprisingly, its very very quiet, and I can’t feel any vibration. The generator that runs the equipment is much louder in fact!!! See the picture below :)
I got back to the office around 1PM, and started working on a roadway embankment for Ben and Robin. They were modelling the embankment in Plaxis to evaluate the embankment stability, anticipated settlement, and the influence on a nearby pipeline. Instead of wickdrains, they planned to use the IFCO system to accelerate the consolidation, which basically consists of knifing these little trenches, placing a pipe in the bottom, and backfilling the small trench with clean sand. Pumps are attached to the pipe system to pump the water out and essentially dewater the embankment to accelerate the consolidation and subsequent strength gain. The IFCO system is widely used here in the Netherlands. I worked on this most of Friday as well.
When I got home on Thursday night, I had a package from my mom!! There was a NY sweatshirt, some pajama pants, and a pink hat/glove/scarf set. Also some winter hand towels. Haha. She’s obviously been shopping at the Christmas Tree Shop again. There was also a card from my grandma and some photos from when I was little. God I don’t know how I survived.... I had headgear and big glasses and used to actually wear both to school. Who wears headgear to school??? I also had this unbelievably bad perm. I got a perm when I was maybe 6 years old. Why my mother agreed to that I have no idea hahaha. I guess her way of letting me be an individual and express myself. Thanks mom.
I was so unbelievably tired, I went to bed so early, probably around 20:30. it felt amazing. AMAZING! Also, aftern being here for 6 weeks, i finally figured out how to work the heat in my apartment. It was always so cold, I was practically wearing a snowsuit while I was home. The heat is motion sensitive, so I assumed that since I’m never home, by the time I did actually get home and went to bed, the heat didn’t have enough motion to keep it on. But it turns out that the heat IS motion sensitive, but in addition to tripping the sensor, you also have to push a button on the thermostat to turn it on. So basically, I’ve been living without heat for 6 weeks in the middle of winter. Wow. So now, the apartment is fine. A little too warm even :)
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