8th Tee and Bridge Construction
The planning for this project started with two months of meetings with the Dedham Conservation Commission to get the construction process just right. The con com was interested in this project because we would be removing this path thereby connecting all the wetlands divided by this pictured intersection. We then commenced on this project by removing the old cart path and making the two ponds into one large pond.
The first ten feet of bridge
They have to make the bridge big enough to support the backhoe to minimize wetland disturbance. Attached to the backhoe is a plate compactor used to vibrate the 12' pole 4'to 8' into the soil. Believe it or not we only hit one rock...very remarkable for this property.
We started removing the right side of the tee and moving it over to the left.
We need to take the unusual step to shape the entire tee with the mini excavator as it was impossible to get a bulldozer out there. The material was so soft it may not have even support anything heavier.
You may not be able to tell, but the elevation of the tee was raised by two feet, flood proofing it to a 10 year flood standard.
We have two layers of geotextile in the profile to help give the tee some stability in the wetland situation. We also put a deeper, drier mix of 80% sand 20% soil on top. This was carted over the our small utility vehicles.
You can see the plywood down, weather was closing in on us, we were dealing with frost in the morning and soupy mess in the afternoon.
This is from the back of the back tee, we added about 8 yards to the hole.
Tim after rolling the surface to level before sodding the actual tee surface. The tee may settle over the next year because of the situation in which we building this. This may mean that we will have to strip the sod and level the surface again, but that is not that big of a deal compared to everything else that went into this project.
Because of the weather, the sod was delivered to us frozen into rolls. We had to bring them into the shop to thaw a little at a time before trucking them out to install.
The sod was trucked out through the snow across the seventh fairway. The snow made a good protective layer for this.
However, the snow made it difficult to get the sod down on the last tee, so it needed to be shoveled before installation.
Joe, Barrett, and Ricardo after a long day. I will spare you the pictures, but despite all this adversity, the sod started to put down roots when checked just three weeks later. This will help us get the tees open earlier in the spring.
The forward tee was leveled and shifted to the right, closer to the water, and back a few yards. We will have to finish the cart path in spring.