C City-built Concrete Fence-Posts By A. T. Rhodes Superintendent of Streets and Sewers, Leominster, Mass. ONCRETE fence-posts for guard-rails have been in use for some time now in Leominster and have brought much favorable commendation from taxpayers and other interested observers. Last winter we built up a gang mold which will make nine posts in a group. The posts are 7 feet long and 6 inches square, reinforced the entire length with a 38-inch twisted bar in each corner. The style of fence we are erecting calls for a 4 x 4-inch top rail and a 2 x 6-inch bottom rail. The post is notched at the upper end to accommodate the 4 x 4-inch top rail and a %inch anchor bolt is built into the top of the post to hold the 4 x 4-inch top rail in place. Two pieces of 3.8-inch gas pipe are built into the post to take the bottom rail of the fence. Both the top and bottom rails are halved together at every other post, staggered, painted and coated with white lead between the halving. The %-inch bolt holding the top rail is countersunk into the rail. The posts are rubbed above the grade with a carborundum rubbing stone to give a good finish. FORM FOR CONCRETE GUARD-RAIL POSTS AND COMPLETED INSTALLATION IN LEOMINSTER, MASS. The gang mold is hooked together with hookand-eye bolts, and two through-rods pass through the mold from side to side, holding the 8-inch gas pipe in place, thus forming spacers for the post mold and clamping the outsides together to prevent spreading. The mold is made of 7-inch boards, except the two outsides, which are made of heavier planks. The ends of each division head are mortised at the top and bottom into the headers. A board platform is leveled up and the gang mold placed upon it before filling. Chamfer strips are used to mitre the outside corners of the posts. A 1:2:3 mix of concrete with a 2 per cent saturated solution of calcium chloride added is used, making it possible to remove the posts from the molds two days after the concrete TH has been placed. The posts can be lifted by the %-inch bolt in the upper end without loosening the bond. The calcium chloride accelerates the hardening and setting of the posts. With only one post mold of this kind, the making of the posts has been in the nature of knitting-work, some gang at the municipal yard filling the mold whenever it is stripped and set up again. The filling of the mold takes only a short time, after which it is left for the concrete to harden and the form to be set up again. The costs of the posts have not been determined accurately as yet, but, inasmuch as the forms are used repeatedly and men do not have to be employed outside of our regular gangs to manufacture the posts, the costs are known to be very low. Campaign Reduces Ground-Water By D. C. Newman Collins Township Engineer, Cranford, N. J. HE infiltration of ground water into sanitary sewers is manifest to many municipalities, and the remedy is elusive. Our sewers rarely give trouble in dry, warm weather when water consumption is greatest, and yet they overflow during wet periods with no causative increase due to domestic use. Overflowing manholes testify to an overreaching of capacity, but frequently defeat analysis of the definite source of the trouble. To rebuild a sewer system is too great an expense to be considered, and where long trunk lines exist, combination storm and sanitary sewers are very expensive. Cranford, N. J., has about four miles of trunk line to tidewater, and my judgment prompted a persistent campaign against infiltration and obstructions in the sew ers. In 1919, our population of 6,000 suffered most intolerable conditions due to backing-up of house sewers and overflowing manholes for periods of ten to twelve days in average wet periods. Our outfall sewer has a capacity of 3,000,000 gallons per day. This will handle a maximum flow of 500 gallons per capita. Today, after the addition of many miles of new sewer and with a population estimated at 10,ooo, we have very little complaint. Our manholes overflow only in a few places for a few hours at exceptional periods. Our per capita flow is now about 300 gallons per day. The practice in Cranford is to exclude roof leaders from discharging into the sewers, but cellar drains are permitted. Just what actual conditions exist we do not know, but we have a suspicion that the flow from many roof leaders and perhaps property drains finds its way into the sewers. Very likely the ends of Y branches contribute a serious leakage in the aggregate, and poorly constructed or loosely bedded house connections contribute materially to the trouble. While we have some leaky manholes, I do not think they alone cause serious trouble. Cranford lies in the Rahway Valley, with the Rahway River winding through the town in a general north-and-south direction. The tributaries which feed storm water into the river find their way mostly through private properties, which reduces the responsibility of keeping them open, with the result that storm water is retained, saturating the soil and causing general abnormal conditions. Initial Sewer Cleaning The first actual work in our campaign against infiltration was in 1921 when we started a gang of men with an improvised outfit of buckets and ropes at the outlet below Rahway. We made successful progress for about a mile, when we found one section completely filled with quicksand deposited from a long private sewer which had been poorly laid and which supplied an apparently unlimited flow of quicksand as fast as we removed it. We took up the matter with the owners of the private land and, as we had spent our allowance, STONES, WOOD AND MUCK REMOVED FROM MANHOLE IN ROSS AVENUE, CRANFORD, N. J. we let the owners have our men to reconstruct and clean this lateral. We then purchased two complete sewercleaning outfits consisting of special buckets of different sizes, wire rope and hand winches. On each outfit we put three men, who, working together, could assist each other in emergency. We cleaned our entire four miles of trunk line and each principal lateral in town at a total cost, including equipment, of about $3,500. No flushing was done, because we believe that this simply pushes along obstructions which should be removed. We preserved photographic exhibits of material removed, consisting of piles of cobbles, road stone, roots, sand, ashes and miscellaneous materials, most of the accumulation being just downstream from right-angle bends. One specimen consisted of a solid mass of roots that weighed 60 pounds and looked like a lump of crude rubber. It measured about 8 inches thick and was in the form of an L about 18 inches on each leg. It was taken from a 20inch line about 25 feet deep and had probably alone caused a big percentage of our trouble. Many of the piles of material from a single length between manholes would fill a small truck. This systematic cleaning helped greatly. Each fall we now put our men to work cleaning the sewers after the road work is finished. This work includes all laterals and other troublesome spots. About $2,000 is put into our yearly budget for this work, but rarely more than $800 to $1,200 is spent. work is all done slowly by hand power, working in the direction of the flow. We find that a slowly moving bucket will increase the pressure of the flow and push ahead into the manhole much more sediment than the bucket will hold. High-speed work will create a suction that holds back the sludge and advances the bucket ahead of the flow, thus inviting damage to the sewer and equipment. Drainage Work From time to time we worked persistently to lower the groundwater level. At first we were only able to open drainage brooks, and with the aid of the Union County Mosquito Commission did much work in relieving spots where storm waters collected. Ve began a campaign to secure right-of-way for storm sewers and have built some of them, with most surprising results. During routine work, we have searched for bad leaks. In one case an 8-inch private sewer was found which had a broken section where it crossed an open brook. This fed the full capacity of the opening into the sewers in wet periods. We also found an antique manhole outfit where an 8inch pipe had been installed in the river, presumably to flush out a siphon underpassing the river. This 8-inch pipe was entirely open and the gate-valve regulating the flow from the river was rusted out. We lowered the river and plugged the pipe permanently. We found a new housing development in a The CRANFORD SEWER CLEANING CREW WITH MACHINE USED section where storm water was held up. Each one of these houses had the usual 4-inch sewer clean-out in the cellar floor. In the spring, storm water collected in the vicinity, for want of an outlet, and of course these clean-outs were all opened and each one might contribute 150,000 gallons per day into the sewer system. We immediately built a storm sewer, so that the cleanouts need to handle no more overtime work. COLLECTION OF MATERIAL CLEANED FROM SEWER AND REMOVED FROM MANHOLE BETWEEN NORTH AVENUE AND THE RAILROAD, CRANFORD A more recent case was in a new development where six houses were built and five cellars dug across a well-defined drainage brook in a valley, in spite of our request that the property be drained before occupancy. When later a sewer for these houses was asked for, we refused to construct it until complete rightof-way was delivered to us for a storm sewer to drain the land. These houses all had cellars full of water, and their sewer clean-outs were waiting for the sanitary sewer to drain the surface water. This storm sewer is now being built. Another important improvement was made to one of the river dams. The dam was originally built with a private boat landing on one side. We bought the land for park purposes, demolished the boat landing and rebuilt the dam with nearly ten feet more spillway. Before this was done, the banks at this spot were washed away at least once a year, but since the dam was remodeled, no trouble has been encountered and the high-water line is much lower. We are steadily on the lookout for drainage obstructions and leaks and are pushing storm sewers as quickly as possible. A recent discovery showed three houses connected to an old sewer about which we knew nothing. On digging it up we found it flowing nearly full of surface water in a steady flow. We could not trace its source or discharge, but F expect to rebuild it, cut off the two ends, and connect it up properly with manholes. I do not believe that roof leaders and cellar drains form as serious an overload as is generally believed. If cellar drains are located in very wet spots where surface water collects in great quantities, a suitable storm sewer to dispose of the surface water will help the situation without necessarily depriving the house owners of means of drying their cellars. There are houses in Cranford where a cellar drain to the sanitary sewer is essential to occupancy of the house, and results show that the prompt removal of the ground water in the neighborhood makes it possible to avoid the cutting-out of such necessary drains. We have found that the annual cleaning at certain places is essential and that a thorough cleaning of a sewer after a street is improved by paving is absolutely necessary. This is due to the deposit of various materials in the sewer during construction and to the entrance of sand and gravel in making private house connections to vacant lots in advance of improve ments. ACKNOWLEDMENT.-From a paper read before the New Jersey Sewage Works Association, at Trenton, N. J. A New Park and Playground Given to Los Angeles, Calif. OLLOWING her gift of the site known as "Mount of Olives," at Hollywood Boulevard and Vermont Avenue, to the city for park and playground purposes, Miss Aline Barnsdall, philanthropist and civic leader, has offered an adjacent site, valued in excess of $300,000, to be used as a park and playground, and operated by the Los Angeles Playground and Recreation Department. The original gift, designated now as Barnsdall Park, was of approximately $1,000,000 value and has already been put to use by the founding of "the little lattice playhouse," where bi-weekly programs are given by dramatic groups of boys and girls. The second offer, made in the belief that the children should have a site for their use adjoining the exquisitely landscaped park, would not only give the city an added and valuable area but include a building that is well suited to carry on playground programs in music and esthetic dancing, for which Miss Barnsdall has further offered the salary of an expert director for ten years. -From The Playground, September, 1927. Through the courtesy of "American Forests and Forest Life," the magazine of the American Forestry Association, Washington, D. C., The American City is enabled to reproduce the two photographs here shown, as a striking contrast between the presence and the absence of trees bordering the roadways. The upper view illustrates beautiful woods-like planting on private land adjoining a main highway near Bakersfield, Calif. The other, taken in southeastern Pennsylvania, shows that absence of plant growth contributes to a desolate appearance in that region as surely as on the western plains. These pictures appear in the above magazine in conjunction with an article entitled "Street and Roadside Trees," by Furman Lloyd Mulford, who traces the historical development of roadside planting and describes the leading trees adapted for this purpose, both in cities and in rural districts, in various parts of the United States |