Hey All, 

John has an article in the latest issue of Land & Water Magazine!  Entitled Environmentally Sensitive Streambank Stabilization, the piece talks all about what went into the Willow Creek Project.  

READ IT HERE

It’s a great read, check it out here.

When I was at the Willow Creek Site last week, I came across this interesting little slope stabilization technique…

I believe they call it the ‘Alberta Sneaker Method‘.  Start with a Sneaker, Soil Nail it, and top off with Flexterra.  This being a relatively new method, John is still working on the typicals and studies are ongoing at Colorado State University to see if efficacy rates are affected through shoe type.  Does a tennis shoe provide superior erosion control versus a casual loafer?  These are the things we need to find out before this method can be adopted industry wide.

In Alberta, whenever you plan somethings outdoors during November, you can’t rely on the forecast.  Here is an excerpt for our Willow Creek Video (available May 28th at the WatchYourDirtStore).  It is the start of the first day of the AIT workshop.  It was a little chilly in the morning, but nothing too too bad – we’ve seen worse.

More footage and news from this video is right around the corner, so stay tuned!

Here’s a quick little piece.  It’s the end-credit sequence to the latest episode of Dirt Time.  Very simple idea and not too complicated to execute. In this little sequence, we took the original blueprint of the construction site and added various credits throughout the plan. Took the altered plan into our graphics program and whipped the camera around the page from one credit to the next. A fun little tecnique that (we think) is quite cool…

Hi All,

James Here,

In our upcoming Dirt Time episode on the Willow Creek Project, we go through a lot of different slope and streambank stabilization techniques (we’ll post a list soon).  But one of the cooler techniques we cover is Slope Nailing – or Soil Nail Launching.

For those of you who don’t know, Soil Nail Launching is a slope stabilization technique wherein steel rods are shot into the slope, providing structure for the slope to stabilize itself around.  That’s a pretty loose description, for more information, definitely check out:  www.SoilNailLauncher.com

Now, from what I understand, in the past slope nailing was somewhat of an involved process that dealt with drilling, grouting, and had multiple steps….kind of complicated. 

That is, until Morsky Industrial Services, out of Saskatchewan, brought a way-cool machine  to the site that shoots the rods (with great force) directly into the hillside.  No muss, no fuss.

You can check out a little more about the Soil Nailing Machine machine here.

In the finished video (due out soon) we talk quite a bit about it.  But here is a quick little video showing what I’m talking about…

That is apparently one of only FOUR machines in the world! (currently)

The edit is just about done.  I’m actually headed back to the site soon to get some ‘after’ footage.  So there will be tonnes of updates on this site in the near future.

Keep checking back!  …Or better yet, subscribe to our RSS Feed.

-James