The Valleyist Papers
A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS WRITTEN IN FAVOUR OF THE IMPROVEMENT OF STEPHENS VALLEY
Author – William Ray
Edition 4. Issue 6.
One of the great things about the construction of the SV Downtown is getting to watch all the cool construction machinery in action. If only Rochford Realty had thought to build bleachers and a concession stand, plans for the summer would be complete!
Virtually each piece of construction equipment presently at work on the project is part of one big effort that is job one for our downtown. That job is moving the big hill where the SV Welcome Center used to be, into the valley at the end of Meriwether Park. It sounds simple, but it is quite complicated to do with all of us already living pretty much all around the downtown site. The project began with clearing and grubbing (a phrase of art that just means removing all vegetation).
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Soon thereafter, Rawso Constructors brought in a couple of dozers and big track hoes. After they arrived they began improving the creek going through the site and building berms to help them control runoff and give them boundaries for the fill material to be brought in next.
Then came the earth moving equipment to begin the task of relocating the hill. Pretty soon, the earth moving was stymied by the discovery that most of that hill is made of good old Tennessee limestone. To keep the project going, there is really only one viable solution – explosives must be used to make the rock moveable. Although many people learned most of what they know about using explosives by watching Wile E. Coyote use dynamite to attempt the capture of the Roadrunner, modern explosive use in earthmoving projects is a bit more strategic. There are no sticks of dynamite with fuses involved here.
What came next on our project was the introduction of big rock drills like these.
The GPS units on the dozers know how deep they need to dig to relocate the hill, and where the rock makes it impossible to push the soil, these rock drills come in handy to drill vertical shafts down into the rock to that explosives can do their work. The holes are not drilled randomly. In fact, none of this work is random. It is highly planned and uses high levels of mathematics to develop the blasting plans. First, they compare the area where rock needs to be removed to surrounding homes and commercial buildings. They consider street alignments and possible traffic along those streets. All of this goes into a software tool that gives them recommended number of charges and the recommended depth of those charges, to make sure that there is no damage to property.
Seismographs like these are also monitoring the shock waves to make sure those recommendation are followed.
Once the explosion solutions are rendered, a plan is developed to drill a grid of holes to break up the maximum amount of rock that can be fractured without damaging surrounding property.
The rock drills are deployed to implement that plan. The drill shafts down into the rock to the depth proscribed by the blasting plan, then personnel come behind the drills and they load explosives, sand, and crushed stone in on top of the explosive charge, being careful to make sure that the wires leading to the detonators are kept intact (as we said...there are no fuses being lit, rather the detonation is done by electrifying the detonators). Once all these wires are connected and the holes are properly backfilled, the area is cleared, a warning horn is blown, and the explosives are detonated.
After all that work, the excavation and transport vehicles have their work cut out for the next day.
They remove the broken-up rock and move it to the area where our new downtown will be, while the explosives crew starts their painstaking process again for the next construction day. That is why we are seeing only one detonation per day – there is a lot of work involved in planning each explosion, and we clearly don’t want to rush that process.
June 3 Michael Martin Murphy at the Franklin Theater
June 4 An evening with Rodney Crowell at Cheekwood
June 4 - 7 Gibson Garage Fest at the Gibson Guitar Garage
June 5 Cheekwood Thursday Night Out
June 5 Graham Nash at Country Music Hall of Fame
June 6 Stephens Valley Music at the Pool
June 7. Forever Abbey Road Beatles tribute at Cheekwood
June 8 Brentwood Summer Concert Series - Monsters of Yacht at Eddy Arnold Amphitheater
June 12 Cheekwood Thursday Night Out featuring Take the Highway
June 12 Songwriters Series at Franklin Theater
June 14 SV BBQ and Bluegrass Event
June 17 Dan Tyminski at The Ryman
June 19 Cheekwood Thursday Night Out featuring Wolph
June 21 7 Bridges Road - Eagle Tribute at Williamson County Performing Arts
June 22 Summer Concert Series at Eddy Arnold Amphitheater featuring Country Night
June 22 Yacht's Landing Show at The Franklin Theater
June 25 Outlaw Music Festival at First Bank Amphitheater
June 26 End of the Line - Allman Brothers Tribute Band at Cheekwood
June 28 Summer Concert Series featuring Brentfest at Eddy Arnold Amphitheater
June 28 Gimme Springsteen Show at Williamson County Performing Arts Center
July 3 SV Music at the Pool and also Brown Keith-Hynes Fiddle Player at Cheekwood
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