How the sewer pipes were installed.
This background on how these pipes were installed comes from a guy who was there. Here is his description:
FROM: Ben Davidson
date Sun, May 24, 2009 at 1:59 PM
subject Re: Thule Greenland
Larry,
Really enjoyed the visit to your web-site of Thule, Greenland. Looks like only minimal changes since I was there 12/24/57 to 12/23/58. The heated pipelines were being installed while I was there. At that time we had water and waste hauled in trucks.
As a note of interest (on the construction). A gravel bed had to be laid for the pipe lines at Thule. The Sea Bees did the job by drilling 8 foot holes 18 inches apart and putting a stick of dinamite in each. They did about 30 feet at a time. The bed had to be 8 feet deep and 15 feet wide. When the charges were set, they covered the field with about 4 feet of cargo nets and a steel mesh net over the whole thing. When it went off, the whole thing jumped about 6 feet in the air and came down about 3 feet higher than before the blast. The nets were removed and the rubble (perma-frost) was hauled off, then the ditch was filled with the crushed rock base. This went on 24 hours a day (between the barracks) and was hell during a good dream session. I left before it was put in operation. A real draw-back to the old system was that each barracks had a water tank and a waste tank that were serviced by trucks. The waste tanks always had a drip going outside. You didn't want to screw up because the routine punishment in those days was to be assigned to chop and haul off the "poop-cycle."
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-- The Frozen Echo: Greenland and the Exploration of North America.
-- Greenland's Icy Fury.
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-- An African in Greenland.
-- Arctic Homeland: Kinship, Community and Development in Northwest Greenland.
-- Greenland (World Bibliographical Series)
-- Knud Rasmussen's Posthumous Notes on the Life and Doings of the East Greenlanders
-- North Pole Legacy: Black, White & Eskimo
-- Northwest Greenland: A History
-- The Arctic: Endangered People and Places.
-- Arctic Adventure: Inuit Life in the 1800s
-- Arctic Foxes
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-- Arctic Son.
-- Arctic Folktales.
-- Greenland & The Arctic.
-- Seven Seasons in Greenland.
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-- Eskimo Poems from Canada and Greenland.
-- Greenland: Island at the Top of the World.
-- The battle for Greenland.
-- Arctic Clothing of North America - Alaska, Canada, Greenland.
-- Leaves from a Greenland diary.
-- Driving to Greenland.
-- The Greenland Seal Hunter.
-- The Greenland Ice Cap.
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-- The Arctic Promise:
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-- Greenland: Past and Present.
-- Greenland Ventures.
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-- Greenland's 25 years of indigenous self-rule.
-- FROM GREENLAND'S ICY MOUNTAINS
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-- Living With the Eskimos In Greenland
-- Those Greenland days
-- THE PEREGRINE FALCON IN GREENLAND
-- Greenland: a dream at the top of the world.
-- This is Greenland.
-- David Goes to Greenland
-- The Art of Greenland:
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-- Doctors Wife in Greenland.
-- Greenland in Story and Pictures.
-- THE LAST KINGS OF THULE, A year among the polar Eskimos of Greenland.
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