Today was another tough wake up for an 8:15 am brief. I made up some sleep in our 1 hour drive to the Deltaworks. The Dutch Deltworks is a culmination of movable dams and locks that protects the Dutch coast and land from heavy storms. This project was launched after a disastrous storm hit the Dutch coast on February 1, 1953. The completion of the project decreased the coast by approximately 700 km. We were greeted with a small breakfast(I was not expecting one, but I’m not complaining it was delicious) and started our tour with a video explaining why this project started and how it was all constructed.

I found many parts in the constructed process very interesting. To create a good surface to work on, a Dutch engineer came up with a blanket-like structure strong enough to be placed between the pillars from the soft sand. It also had to be flexible enough to be rolled up. These rolls were constructed to transport these blankets which was an interesting solution. The giant base pillars were made with concrete in this huge hole which was later flooded with water and a boat was created to carry them into place. There could not be any breaks in pouring the concrete to ensure the concrete was evenly distributed. When the pillars were put in place they were filled with sand and then carefully surrounded with layer of rocks. The layer of rocks followed a certain pattern which was cool to learn about. They started with small rocks that would weight around 10-60 kg, these would be placed around the base of the pillars. Another layer of larger rocks were placed on top. The finally layer would contain rocks weigh hundreds of kilos by themselves. The rocks also had to be be placed softly and couldn’t be dropped as to not damage anything, this was done with the help with electronic.

In this part of the Netherlands we were surrounded by wind turbines. I learned from our tour guide that the Netherlands is trying to reach its goal of producing 14% of its power from wind turbines by 2025. They are currently at 12%. The sheer size and amount of the windmills is astonishing, everytime I see one it is hard to believe that it is being turned by just wind.