The "Adair Wind Farm"....(some pics)

[Big_Dave]

Location: South of Adair, Iowa. (exit 76, I-80)

The required amount of access roads and crane pads are now ready for the wind generator assembly crews to get to work (of the 76 wind generators, they had to have 24 pads ready by 7/18/08). Only a few bases need to be finished yet.

Here's some pics and some info about them.

The bases are about 50' across. The holes for the bases are only about 10' deep. Before actually seeing one, I figured that they'd be at least 20' deep.


The 'mount' in the center of the bases are about 16' across.


The rebar is 1 1/2" in diameter, roughly 6-8" on center.






There's about 650 cubic yards of concrete in each base.


They use 2 different sized cranes to assemble and erect these wind generators. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get any pics of these since we didn't do any work on the sites they were set up at.

However, the 'big crane' that they use to erect the towers weighs in at around 1 million, 300 thousand pounds. It takes 1 week to assemble it and 1 week to tear it down.

When we first arrived down there at the end of June, the general contractor had been there for 2 months and already hauled 160,000 tons of rock and gravel. The day we arrived, there was still 400,000 tons left to haul. We hauled roughly 1350 tons of rock/gravel per day. 8 trucks, 7 loads per truck, each 'round' approx. 85 miles.

Even with the cost of the rock and gravel, PLUS the cost of hauling, dumping, blading and packing it.......it's still way cheaper than moving the big crane in pieces.

They plan to 'walk' the cranes from pad to pad.

[BeetleBailey]

neato!! your'e such an educational fella. why didn't you become a professor?? you would have been good at it. an I ain't being a smart azz I'm serious. with your memory and desire too know and learn you could have been well whatever made you rich.