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)

August 14, 2005: Lifting girders from the I-26 overpass

The Testa-Cashman guys were at it all night - and when I arrived about 6am the removal of the floor girders on the piers east of the I26 overpass was almost complete. Here is the story of overpass girder removal: lifting compared with the Friday night removal by gentle lowering of the girders.

The procedure consisted of attaching cables to each girder, cutting the bolts that coupled the girder to the caps, lifting the girder, rotating it and then lowering it. I have tried to capture most of the steps in the procedure. I shall fill in the details a bit later

Continuation of removing the girders on the east side of the overpass

After all the east girder were removed - here is the I-26 overpass.

First - clean up the debris from removing the roadway between the overpass girders

Erecting the crane that will be used to life the girders

Moving the lifting cables into position between the edge girder and the one next to it

Lowering the cables between the girders

Looping the cables around the outside girder

Moving the loops into position

Initial lifting of the girder

the lifting the entire girder

rotating the girder and lowering it to the ground

Decoupling the cable loops

Rotating the lift cables back to the next girder

Positioning the left cables

Cutting the attachment between the girder and the pier cap

An initial lift from below

Then lift - slowly slowly

Rotate and lower

Note the protective blankets placed over the I-26 edge barriers

to the final resting place

Decouple the cable loops

And so it start again with lowering the cables between the next pair of girders

Making the loops

Raising the loops and moving them into the lift configuration

and so the process starts again

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