TVA Monograph No. 75, Chapter 7: Construction

This is the longest chapter on construction, and it records the methods and equipment TVA used on its steel sheet pile cellular cofferdams. The topics run in order: template design and use, handling and setting the sheet piling, timber trestles, driving and driving equipment, load-bearing piling, pile hammers and their selection, tie-ins, closure cells, cell filling, floodgates and sluiceways, foundation treatment, and unwatering and maintenance.

The choice of template can materially affect both construction time and cost, and the chapter describes several, including a two-deck design with an outer template of about 64 feet and 69 feet 6 inches in diameter and an inner template that weighed only 5 1/4 tons and made placing the fill easier. Tee guides on the template helped set the connecting piles.

It also describes foundation treatment on real jobs, including grouting with holes about 40 feet deep to cut off underground flow, and an auxiliary earth dike used to equalize pressure while grouting was finished. These stories show how field conditions change the plan.