Bridge over troublesome waters.... Part 3

Bridge... Part 1
Bridge... Part 2

So to bring everyone up to date, the beams are across the creek, and it's getting late in the year. Things are going to get a mite colder, wetter and generally harder to do. I've made a few compromises to the original design due to lack of time and money. I was originally going to weld the beams to 5 foot posts and sink them into the ground. This would have raised the bridge about 2 feet above ground level. This would have raised the bridge over any normal floods and kept the impact of the water minimal as the water would begin to spread over the rest of the land and not just channeled directly into the bridge by the creek banks. The drawback to this design, besides that I don't have the money to buy 6, 5-inch diameter, 5 foot long pieces of pipe, is that the ramp onto and off of the bridge would have to be very long in order for anything but a pickup be able to cross it because of the angle involved. So, plan "B" is to sink them into the ground about halfway, on a base with good drainage to minimize frost heave, packed in and around the beams with concrete waste. I'll then put oak 4x6's on top, lagged to another wooden beam running under the flange, effectively clamping the wood onto the beams, tying everything together.

This shows the bank that was filled in with about 8 ton of concrete waste. As you can see, it packed very nicely. Once the beams were laid in at the correct height and distance apart, and leveled to the other beams as well as straight, then they were backfilled.

This shows the setup used to lift one end of the beam. First, the trench was dug under the wooden support and the beam lifted off. The support was cut and removed, then lowered into position, leveled and checked for correct distance from the other beams.

Did I mention these things were heavy? And notice the absence of "what's his name"....

And here's a bad shot of the beams, placed and backfilled on this end. Only had the phone camera on me that day.

And the oak 4x6's that are going to be mounted on top. My generator took a dump while I was mounting the clamping structures on both side of the bridge, so I need to get another one. The idea is to run 2x6's under the flange of the beams and lag the 4x6's to the 2x6 to clamp them into place. Let me know if you have any other ideas on how to anchor the top beams to the bridge. This is the only thing I can come up with using limited resources.

 I have to get a couple more pictures of the clamp setup for each end. It's pretty stable right now and I'm not too afraid of any floods. Of course the big ones come in the spring and depending on how much snow pack there is, they can be mighty. Next steps are to finish the beams for the top so that I can back the truck in close enough so I can add ballast to the far side and start working on the ramp. The far side has a much bigger dropoff than the near side, and the driveway on that side needs to be moved closer to the mountain to get it out of the flood zone. It can get about 3 foot deep there after about 3 days rain.
As you saw in earlier pictures the footbridge was pretty much destroyed in pulling over the beams, and it was in the way of placing the last beam, so it had to be removed. It makes it fun walking across the creek on those beams.
O-Dark-Thirty. Hunting. Dressed like Sasquatch. Rifle in your arms and a tiny flashlight. Yea. Fun.