Changing the face of Charleston : The unbuilding of the Grace and Pearman Bridges
Frank's Internet Home Page
Blog: 2005
Archives of unbuilding sections
Blog: 2006
The story of building the Ravenel Bridge
Visit our
Adventures in Singapore
Click to view all web page segments
I enjoy hearing from you. If you have comments and suggestions, write me.


Unbuilding Highlights
(Apr 10)
Meeting St. Stories
(Jul 10 2006)
East Bay Stories
(Oct 10 2006)
Drum Island Stories
(Feb 17)
Pearman Bridge Stories
(Apr 3)
Grace Bridge Stories
(Apr 3)
Imposions: Prep and boom
(Mar 27)
Unbuilding Bridge Blog
(July 23 2006)
Unbuilding Challenges
(Mar 13)
Learning Links
(Feb 20)
Unbuilding Stories
(Mar 13)
Video and Sounds
(Feb 28)

January 4, 2006:
Preparing for the Mt. Pleasant pier

Mt. Pleasant is going to build a loooong pier out into the Cooper River on top of the bases of the Pearman piers. This requires that the caps and columns be removed down to some point - that, in this case, is painted red on each column. More precision work. Below you can beging to see the strategy unfold - dropping the piers down to the red lines just above the water level and then later, adding the floor girders and doing some reverse unbuilding - sometimes known as building.
Here is the Pearman worksite - only a few girders left to be harvested

Harvested girders ready for the Reef Transplantation Procedure

Here are the exposed floor girders. If you ignite your curious eyes, you will see the stub of a pier base between the 4th and 5th girders (from the right)

Hiding between the girders is a view of the preparation for the Mt Pleasant pier.

Looking from the Grace Bridge, you can see the red marks at the bottoms of the columns - just above the high water level - marking the foundation for the Mt. Pleasant fishing pier (Click image for a larger view)

Here is the barge with the 1250 (resting) that will reduce the columns to the height of the red marks

Another view showing Mickey's crew drilling vertical holes

Another view of the array of piers.

So, by now you are wondering how will they drop the columns near the shore. Shown here are a pear of flotation tracks. The idea is to mount an excavator on the top of these and simply drive out to the piers that are close to the shore and then hammer them down to the red marks.

Click to view all unbuilding web page segments

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Attribution: C. Frank Starmer and Sparky Witte from http://oldcooperriverbridge.org