Reading up on the Hoover Dam and the concrete mix they used blew my mind

I was looking at some old construction stuff and found out they used over 3.25 million cubic yards of concrete for it. The crazy part is they had to pour it in small blocks because the chemical heat from curing that much at once would have taken over a hundred years to cool down. Makes you think about the planning on big jobs today. What's the biggest pour you guys have ever been a part of?

3 comments

3 Comments

milessmith18d ago

That's the kind of fact that makes modern safety meetings look silly. Biggest pour I saw was a foundation that felt huge at the time, but hearing that just wrecks the scale. They basically built a mountain out of concrete and had to treat it like a giant ice cube tray. Makes you wonder what we're building now that will seem totally insane in eighty years.

grace_gonzalez4618d ago

You're right, milessmith, the scale of those old projects is hard to even picture. It really does make our current big builds feel small. I read they had to bury miles of pipe in that Hoover Dam pour just to carry cold river water through and stop it from cracking as it set. We pour big foundations now, but we're not building literal mountains. Makes you wonder if our new data centers or battery farms will look just as wild to our grandkids.

richard22618d ago

Used to think modern tech made us smarter, but that old dam planning is just unreal.