BES 111- CIVIL ENGINEERING ORIENTATION

Name: _Jeremy Pontillas____________ Instructor: _Francia Tomenio____

Course, Year & Section: __BSCE 1B____

Water Resources Engineering Structures

Hoover Dam

https://www.viator.com/en-PH/tours/Las-Vegas/Hoover-Dam-Private-Limo-Luxury-Tour-from-Las-Vegas/d684-
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A. Location and Picture

The Hoover Dam is located in Boulder City, Nevada, which was originally built for
construction workers, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) southeast of Las Vegas, Nevada.
B. Date Constructed

The contractors were given seven years starting on April 20, 1931, but concrete
installation in the dam was completed on May 29, 1935, and all features were finished
by March 1, 1936.

C. Method of Construction

The first tough phase in development was

blasting the canyon walls to create four water
diversion tunnels. Faced with stringent time
constraints, laborers labored in 140-degree
tunnels filled with carbon monoxide and dust,
prompting a six-day walkout in August 1931.
When two of the tunnels were finished, the
excavated rock was used to build a
temporary coffer dam, which successfully
rerouted the river's flow in November 1932.
https://lasvegassun.com/photos/galleries/1905/may/15/
hoover-dam---construction/1133/
The second stage was to clear the walls that would confine the dam. High scalers were
suspended from up to 800 feet above the canyon bottom, wielding 44-pound
jackhammers and metal poles to smash free debris, a perilous activity that resulted in
injuries from falling employees, equipment, and boulders.

Meanwhile, the drained riverbed enabled building of the powerhouse, four intake
towers, and the dam itself to begin. Cement was mixed on-site and lifted over the
canyon on one of five 20-ton cableways, with a new bucket arriving to the workmen
below every 78 seconds. To offset the heat created by cooling concrete, approximately
600 miles of pipe loops were implanted to circulate water through the poured blocks,
with workers spraying the concrete constantly to keep it wet.

D. Purpose of Construction
The Hoover Dam was developed for three major reasons: flood control, agricultural
water, and hydroelectric power generation. However, flood control was the primary

https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a22539919/the-hoover-dam-changed-americaand-it-
might-do-it-again/

reason that the Bureau of Reclamation opted to take on the projects.

E. Designer or Builder

The Bureau of Reclamation was debating whether type of

dam should be utilized. Officials finally opted on a large
concrete arch-gravity dam, which was designed by the
Bureau's top design engineer, John L. Savage. The
monolithic dam would be thick at the bottom and thin towards
the top, with a convex face facing the water above the dam.
The dam's bending arch would carry the power of the water
into the abutments, in this case the canyon's rock walls. The
wedge-shaped dam would be 660 feet (200 meters) thick at
the bottom and 45 feet (14 meters) thick at the top, allowing
for a freeway connecting Nevada and Arizona.
Engr. John L. Savage

Six Companies, Inc.

To bid on the project, they created a joint venture with Pacific Bridge Company of
Portland, Oregon; Henry J. Kaiser & W. A. Bechtel Company of San Francisco;
MacDonald & Kahn Ltd. of Los Angeles; and the J.F. Shea Company of Portland,
Oregon. Six Companies, Inc. was the name of the joint venture since Bechtel and
Kaiser were deemed one business for the purposes of Six in the name. The name was
accurate and an inside joke among the San Franciscans involved in the bid, as "Six
Companies" was also a Chinese beneficent organization in the city. There were three
eligible proposals, and Six Companies' price of $48,890,955 was the lowest, coming in
at $24,000 less than the confidential government estimate of how much the dam would
cost to build, and five million dollars less than the next-lowest bid.

More concerned with the dam's utility, the Bureau of

Reclamation ornamented it with a Gothic-inspired railing and
eagle sculptures. Many criticized the first design as being too
basic and uninteresting for a project of this magnitude, so Los
Angeles-based architect Gordon B. Kaufmann, then the
Bureau of Reclamation's supervising architect, was brought in
to rebuild the exteriors. Kaufmann dramatically simplified the
design and used an attractive Art Deco style throughout the
project. He created sculptured turrets that rise seamlessly
from the dam face, as well as clock faces on the intake towers
that display the time in Nevada and Arizona — both states are
in different time zones, but because Arizona does not observe
Arch. Gordon B. Kaufmann
Daylight Saving Time, the clocks display the same time for
more than half of the year.

Source: https://dozr.com/blog/building-the-hoover-dam https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hoover-Dam

https://www.aboutcivil.org/hoover-dam-facts-statistics-structure-design-construction.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_Dam