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The final
design chosen by the GCCC differed from ours both in shape and
orientation and is well described in a
plethora of articles found elsewhere.
Another major point of difference
was our choice of basic building material. We choose used car tires
as:
-
we had identified the
need for a cheap, strong, long lasting, readily available, easily
transported and assembled material that would provide a stable, fish
friendly end result.
-
We had seen and
experienced the havoc created by the trucking of large rocks through
residential districts during the building of the seaway- and
consequently knew that Gold Coast residents would oppose a similar
onslaught and so rocks were out!
In essence what we drew up was a triangular structure
made up of columns of stacked car tyres. Each stack was held
together with heavy duty plastic ties at several points around the
tyre's 'circle'. The columns were to be anchored individually by
burying the first 5-6 tyres into the seabed and then infilling with
pumped sand. The stacks were then chained together using heavy duty
plastic ties allowing the columns to sway back and forth mimicking
the movement of bull kelp and so dissipating the force of the
waves.......
Benefits
In addition too providing the
potential for beach restoration and great waves, in an easily
accesible place our design gave a:
- cheap
- impact absorbing
- easily shaped and modified
- well anchored structure
- A robust structure which could survive the huge cyclonic seas
that visit this area
- A structure that would be relatively impervious to boat
anchors and boat propellers
- A structure not prone to sinking into the sand
- A robust structure with cheap easily replaceable modules
- Additionally the vertical tunnels and spaces between the
columns, that were not filled by the natural movement of sand,
would provide a safe attractive habitat for small fish and other
aquatic organisms
- Another environmental gain was that the Gold Coast's over
supply of used tyres would be recycled into a non-polluting
economically advantageous project
Perhaps the use of used car
tyres could be trialled for the next of our artificial surf reefs
which should, we suggest, be placed at Mermaid Beach. It would be an
interesting and perhaps cost effective experiement to build a reef
as described above. Next | |
