Lake Moss Cliffside Steel Bulkhead

Near Completion

The last steel bulkhead we installed on Lake Moss north of Gainesville, Texas was at the bottom of a 108 foot cliff that was 156 feet from the top edge to the shoreline.

We had to transport two sectional barges from a rental company in Houston all the way there, the job is 6 miles south of the Oklahoma border. I wasn’t actually sure I could even pull it off, but I agreed to give it a try. It was in February when we started~!

It was a daunting effort, that was iffy from the start. This customer had been waiting for someone to try this for years. So since we already had 4 other steel bulkhead projects scheduled there, we agreed to try. We transported the excavator, tools and sheetpilings via barge and pontoon boat, all the way down the lake to the base of the cliff and docked.

Needless to say the guys thought I was completely crazy.

 

Before

Construction

Now for the construction pictures. These show just how impossible this project looks, even upon arrival, it was daunting and we just had to start digging out the cliff side to make the new shoreline because there is no possible way to backfill a bulkhead here… call a dump truck? Yeah right… not going to happen. So we made our own. I always hoped we could make enough fill without causing the cliff side to come down on us. In the end, it worked reasonably well.

There were a few rocks that were so large that it was impossible to break them up or move them like we did most of the others, pushing them down behind the wall as fill. Some were larger than my excavator. So instead we left them in place and made flat ground behind and snaking around between them. In the end, it made for a really unusual and wonderful back yard down on the lakefront that all the previously contacted contractors said was impossible.

Once the bulkhead was in, to attach the old boathouse back to the shoreline we cut pieces of 2″ pipe and put a 1 7/8″ solid rod through them to make a large hinge for the boathouse walkway. The walkway was rebuilt from the cut up pieces of the old walkway seen in the pictures. Amazing field re-fabrication work I learned from my years working in fabrication shops and as a designer/drafter for Fluor Daniel and Brown & Root decades prior.

I have an excellent crew that has now been with me for many years. By the end of this project my knee surgery had to be done as soon as possible. My left knee was bone on bone before the job, and by the end of it, the bones in my knee finally gave way and collapsed into the marrow causing excruciating pain. Another week and they would have had to carry me up that stairway. By April I had a new knee. The other will be done soon enough.

I am proud of this little project that everyone said was impossible.

 

Moving the Boathouse