Danville, IL, US
In March of 2019, rehabilitation began on the 94-year-old dam that spans Lake Vermilion in Danville, Illinois. The dam was built in 1925 to create a reservoir and recreational lake. The lake provides drinking water to the county of Vermilion and the surrounding areas. In 1991, the 11 gates on the dam were extended when Lake Vermilion was raised by an additional 5 feet. The scope of the rehabilitation work consisted of replacing ten tainter gates and their trunnion brackets, as well as their actuator/hoist components. There was also a high-level vertical sluice gate to be replaced and a new bulkhead and gate slot assembly to be installed upstream, which sediment and other materials flow through. They also replaced the 252 feet of bridge deck resulting in the workers needing to carefully work around a city sewer line. The new gate project will preserve the lake and for the public to enjoy its benefits for many generations to come.
Portland Bolt was contacted in July of 2019 as the supplier of bolts required for this job. The anchor bolts required were 1-1/4” diameter fully threaded rods. These anchor rods were specified as ASTM F1554 Grade 55 and due to the corrosive environment, needed to be hot-dip galvanized per ASTM F2329. In addition to anchor rods, there were also 7/8” diameter structural bolts needed, meeting ASTM F3125 Grade A325. Being that Portland Bolt inventories a wide variety of diameters and grades of all thread, as well as structural bolts, we were able to cut the rods to length, galvanize them in-house in our state of the art galvanizing line, and get them on a truck to get them to the job site with time to spare.
