 |
 | Home | Contact Us | FAQ | Search & Site Map | Link to Us |
 | Sign In | Join | Other 45 Sites in Network |
| HomeArticlesDiving DestinationsLearning Scuba DivingMarine LifeMiscellaneousDiscussion GroupsGeneralScuba EquipmentScuba LocationsAustralian ScubaUK ScubaDirectoryScuba Clubs |
Scuba Forum / General / September 2006Tire Reef not working
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/15560115.htm Anybody need a few used tires? Seems like this plan was not thought all the way through.. Dan > In the spring of 1972, a nonprofit group called Broward Artificial Reef, > or BARINC, hatched an idea to build a three-mile reef > while at the same time disposing of old tires. With emphasis on "disposing of old tires." The problem is, nobody bothered to check to see if coral, or anything else, would actually grow on tires. As the picture in the article shows, the answer is no. Why couldn't they just make sandals out of them like they did when I was in high school? > The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers endorsed the project; similar ones had > been created in the Northeast and Gulf of Mexico. Broward County pitched > in with the funds. BARINC even raised $8,000 from > bingo games. And so, the tires came from Goodyear and junkyards, bundled > on barges to be dumped at sea. The idea was that an artificial reef called > Osborne Reef -- would form from the stacked tires. They put down about 2 million tires around 1972 and now they're trying to figure out how to remove them again. First, they picked up about 1,000. Then they came back with another project and picked up another 1,600 or so . . . at a cost of $17 per tire. The program to remove them is expected to START in 2008. Excuse me, but what's wrong with 2006, and 2007? Anybody want to help? I've got the coordinates and a couple of boats. The tires are only in 65 feet of water. They're almost within PADI's standard for Open Water I divers. Perhaps we could get a jump on the 2008 date . . . or embarrass the sh.t out of the people that should be acting now. Can you say "Dive with Goodyear I ?" Lee . > Anybody want to help? I've got the coordinates and a couple of boats. The > tires are only in 65 feet of water. They're almost within PADI's standard > for Open Water I divers. Perhaps we could get a jump on the 2008 date . . . > or embarrass the sh.t out of the people that should be acting now. Probably looking at a NDL of around 40 minutes for that depth... Wonder how many tires a person could recover in 40 minutes... Probably depend upon whether the clips that they mentioned are still attached or not... From a logistics standpoint, would it be better to recover one tire at a time or would it be better for the diver to have a lot of lines and marker floats that he could deploy and then someone else be busy recovering them while the diver is busy marking them... With the number of tires that need to be recovered, I suspect it could keep us busy for the rest of our lives... Hell, if they would provide the air fills and a landing craft to be used carry the recovered tires, they might be able to get enough divers to cut down the recover time somewhat... If they have a winch or some sort of crane, they would be able to thread the rope / cable through multiple tires and recover them at the same time... Not exactly something that we would be able to do if we were doing it by hand... Sounds like a job where you leave the fins off and just weigh yourself down so that you can walk on the bottom... Or time to break out the old Mk-V... <grin> > Probably looking at a NDL of around 40 minutes for that depth... Wonder > how > many tires a person could recover in 40 minutes... Probably depend upon > whether the clips that they mentioned are still attached or not... Depends on how you went about it. The most problematic ones are those that have come loose. They'll have to be removed more or less one at a time. I kind of envisioned diving down with one end of a stout rope, fastened to the surface at one end, and running it though as many tires as possible during a dive. Hook the two ends together and mark it for removal by someone with the kind of resources to do that, someone official, with a barge and a crane. Surely they have barges and cranes. After all, that's how they got the tires there in the first place. While we, as individuals could remove some, to be effective in removing 2 million of the damned things, we'd have to have government, industry and public cooperation. > With the number of tires that need to be recovered, I suspect it could > keep us busy for the rest of our lives... The sooner we start, the sooner we make a difference. There's no excuse for waiting until 2008, none at all. > Hell, if they would provide the air fills and a landing craft to be used > carry the recovered tires, they might be able to get enough [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > and just weigh yourself down so that you can walk on the > bottom... Or time to break out the old Mk-V... <grin> See how great minds run along the same channels. I came up with my idea before reading yours. I think I'll have to find someone official to talk to. I know several people on the local Marine Advisory Board and Marine Industry Association as well as a few companies who might be willing to help in return for some well deserved recognition. I wonder if there are any tire companies that would like to assist financially? Lee > The sooner we start, the sooner we make a difference. There's no excuse for > waiting until 2008, none at all. Proper allocation of your tax dollars to the appropriate agencies, consultants, lawyers, comitties, study groups, and other assorted suck runners will preclude the need to actually remove the tires. Hence the delay. Head out there and start yanking them. It's the right thing to do. You will be given a cease and decist by one of the above mentioned obsticals to progress, probably because you didn't file the appropriate permit, or complete the necessary EIS. But you should start yanking them, anyway. My eldest (the now highly efficient trained killer) spends a lot of time in Jax, as that's where her mom is. Consequently, I'm down there semi-frequently, too, and would love to help with something like this. And remember, no good deed goes unpunished. > My eldest (the now highly efficient trained killer) spends a lot of > time in Jax, as that's where her mom is. Consequently, I'm down there > semi-frequently, too, and would love to help with something like this. Bring yourself on down. Bring her with you. We'll find something interesting to continue her training with. Lee I will happily volunteer for those clean-up dives. Excellent practice for navigation/search. -Amanda >>Probably looking at a NDL of around 40 minutes for that depth... Wonder >>how [quoted text clipped - 38 lines] > > Lee > I will happily volunteer for those clean-up dives. Excellent practice for > navigation/search. I presume, from your email address, you're in Chicago. You're welcome to help, but it's kind of along ride. When can you get here? Lee I'm planning another dive trip to FTL in January. There will still be tires left then, right? -a >>I will happily volunteer for those clean-up dives. Excellent practice for >>navigation/search. [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > > Lee > Depends on how you went about it. The most problematic ones are those that > have come loose. They'll have to be removed more or less one at a time. I [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > some, to be effective in removing 2 million of the damned things, we'd have > to have government, industry and public cooperation. Considering how many tires are within a particular area, it might be a good idea to just setup a barge semi-permanently (i.e. between hurricanes) out there and just move it when the tires within reach of the barge have been cleared... Of course, once you start talking about having a barge permanently there, the idea of surface supplied air starts looking a bit more enticing... With a NDL of around 40 minutes, we're not looking at that much time that a single diver can do in a day... We would need multiple divers to get 8 hours of bottom time each day... Since we're talking recreational divng here, we probably shouldn't bring saturation diving into the picture... It would be interesting to do a couple of test dives to see how many tires could be recovered / marked to be recovered during 40 minutes... Maybe they could start out by just putting a bounty of a buck or so on each tire and see if the free market system would work? Although a lot of divers would be willing to make the dive and attach the lines to the tires, there is just not much space on most boats to be able to store many tires for transfer back to shore... Having a barge or something out there so that the tires would not have to be brought all the way back to shore might work a bit better... Now, if they really wanted the bounty system to work, they would put a bounty of a 6-pack of beer on each tire recovered... Hell, that would have it cleaned up in no time... > See how great minds run along the same channels. I came up with my idea > before reading yours. I think I'll have to find someone official to talk > to. I know several people on the local Marine Advisory Board and Marine > Industry Association as well as a few companies who might be willing to help > in return for some well deserved recognition. I think that they need to hire the two of us to do an indepth study for a couple million dollars... We can perform it over a couple cases of beers one weekend and come up with a plan that will work... Grumman-581 > Considering how many tires are within a particular area, it might be a > good [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > permanently there, the idea of surface supplied air starts looking a bit > more enticing... The problem I see with bringing tires up one at at time is two fold. First, it'll take a god awful long time and second, somebody has to lift them onto the barge. Tires, particularly tires partially filled with water, aren't exactly light. > I think that they need to hire the two of us to do an indepth study for a > couple million dollars... We can perform it over a couple cases of beers > one > weekend and come up with a plan that will work... Sounds like a plan to me. You contract with the government write the proposal. Lee > Depends on how you went about it. The most problematic ones are those that > have come loose. They'll have to be removed more or less one at a time. I [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > the kind of resources to do that, someone official, with a barge and a > crane. Surely they have barges and cranes. Thinking about how to do this, in the "one at a time" mode, I was initially thinking of sending the tire up with a lift bag, to someone on the surface to hook it and pull it onboard. But then in thinking about the topology of a tire, I was wondering: if you were to hold a tire vertically, then stick a 2nd stage in whre the rim would occupy and blow, the tire will trap air in its top half ... would this (typically) be enough air (buoyancy) to have the tire float itself up, without needing a lift bag? -hh > > Depends on how you went about it. The most problematic ones are those that > > have come loose. They'll have to be removed more or less one at a time. I [quoted text clipped - 13 lines] > would this (typically) be enough air (buoyancy) to have the tire float > itself up, without needing a lift bag? possibly, but what happens when the tire reaches the surface and encounters surf? > possibly, but what happens when the tire reaches the surface and encounters surf? Its over (relatively) deep water: surface conditions should be no more than swells. The next step in the recovery process would be a snorkler on the surface to spot tires and relay a line to pull them over to a boat and onboard. Grumman: I agree that the tire would be less than "half" full - probably 1/3rd -to 1/4th full. Whatever the actual amount, it still should be at least 5-10lbs of lift, and the typical density of (manufactured) rubber is around 1.5 g/cc, so probably ~75% of its mass is already being displaced by its immersion in water, so it wouldn't appear to require all that much extra lift. Of course, if that doesn't work, get a bunch of inner tubes: carry them down empty, insert one in the loose tire, hold tire vertically & inflate to 1/3rd. -hh > The next step in the recovery process would be a snorkler on the > surface to spot tires and relay a line to pull them over to a boat and > onboard. As Lee pointed out previoiusly, tires that are filled with water in the bottom portion are not exactly light, so some sort of crane for lifting them aboard the boat might be needed... There is some stuff that has started to grow on them, so perhaps boat owners wouldn't just want to tie them along the perimeter of their boat like you see with the tugs and such... Whereas a single person should be able to pull a rope attached to a tire on the bottom and lift it to close to the surface without too much effort, actually getting it aboard the boat might be a bit more difficult, partially due to the weight of the water, partially due to the angle you would be working at while leaning over the edge of the boat... To get the most people involved in the cleanup as possible, you need to minimize the amount of additional equipment they would need and the physical effort they would be doing... If it seems too much like *work*, many people will avoid it... > Of course, if that doesn't work, get a bunch of inner tubes: carry > them down empty, insert one in the loose tire, hold tire vertically & > inflate to 1/3rd. I have to wonder if perhaps the time to deflate the inner tubes afterwards would perhaps not make this an optimal solution... I suspect that lift bags can be deployed quicker and definitely emptied quicker... Have a rope with an eye splice on each end... Have a lift bag large enough to make the tire positively buoyant... Thread the rope through the lift bag and either connect the two eye splices to a bolt snap or shackle or thread one end of the rope through the eye splice on the other end and connect the free end's eye splice to the bolt snap or shackle... Connect the bolt snap or shackle to the lift bag... Inflate the lift bag and move on to the next tire... Someone on the surface would be responsible for collecting the tires as they reached the surface... Perhaps just connecting them together so that they didn't drift off... This will work without any major equipment expendature on the part of the boat owners... Perhaps the boat would be able to drag the floating mass of tires to a nearby barge which would have a crane for lifting them out of the water... Still, doing it one tire at a time would be a slow approach... Threading a rope, cable, or lifting sling through multiple tires and having a crane lift them at that point would definitely be more efficient, but at that point, you start getting away from the idea of recreational diver participation... From what I've read, we generate on the average a single tire per person that needs to be disposed of each year, thus somewhere around 250-300 million tires... Even if every shoe sole in the US was made from used tires, that's nowhere close to enough to recycle all that material... Roads are constantly being built and resurfaced and I suspect that is the only thing that could come close to absorbing that amount of material to be recycled... Unless they set up something for collection of the tires and it is convenient, boat owners are not going to be volunteering to help... >>The next step in the recovery process would be a snorkler on the >>surface to spot tires and relay a line to pull them over to a boat and [quoted text clipped - 13 lines] > equipment they would need and the physical effort they would be doing... If > it seems too much like *work*, many people will avoid it... It will be hard work, and it will occasionally be slow work, and sometimes it might even be contentious work. I agree that lift bags would probably be best, at least til you get to a high concentration of tires, in which case something more like a commercial fishing net would be best. Depends how many tires you find at a time...some dives might just turn up a few, others might turn up a couple dozen. > Have a rope with an eye splice on each end... Have a lift bag large enough > to make the tire positively buoyant... Thread the rope through the lift bag [quoted text clipped - 13 lines] > them at that point would definitely be more efficient, but at that point, > you start getting away from the idea of recreational diver participation... Maybe the collecting would be done by pros and tech divers, but volunteers could still do the spotting...find a tire and tie on a small lift bag on a line, or a small buoy. Of course the collectors would have to be nearby so you don't have a forest of lines hanging around for a long time. Also, you could use different methods away from reefs 'n wrecks, where you don't have to worry about damage. If it's just sand, tow a really long rope with one end on a buoy and "thread" each tire til you have a bunch, then surface with the other end of the rope. Then let some big strong people haul up both ends while you gas off some nitrogen. The contentious part: I saw a lot of tires near wrecks...convince me they're not part of the wrecks and I'll start hauling. -Amanda > But then in thinking about the topology of a tire, I was wondering: if > you were to hold a tire vertically, then stick a 2nd stage in whre the > rim would occupy and blow, the tire will trap air in its top half ... > would this (typically) be enough air (buoyancy) to have the tire float > itself up, without needing a lift bag? I had considering that possibility, although technically, you would not be filling up *half* of the tire with air... Perhaps a third... With that amount of air usage though, you're definitely talking about surface supplied air... If you do it one tire at a time, sending up a small float that just marked the tire and had a strong enough line to lift the tire might work... Having some sort of crane or winch that could lift multiple tires that you strung together would be even more efficient though... The problem with talking about using a crane though is that now we significantly increase the per hour operating costs of the endeavor... The higher the per hour operating costs, the more likely that they are going to want to do more studies and it take even longer before they decide to actually get started... I would like to see them just anchor a barge out there, man it with someone to handle the collection process, and offer a bounty on each tire recovered... When the barge gets full, tow another one over there and tow the full one to the recycling center... Maybe give the people doing the recovery a case of beer as a bonus for every 20 tires they recover... Need to appeal to the good-old-boy redneck diver who might normally not be all that inclined to help in a recyling effort... Beer talks, bullshit walks... >> Depends on how you went about it. The most problematic ones are those >> that [quoted text clipped - 17 lines] > would this (typically) be enough air (buoyancy) to have the tire float > itself up, without needing a lift bag? That's hysterical. How about a surface supply hose, and a few chase boats up top. > How about a surface supply hose, and a few chase boats up top. That would probably be kind of expensive. Even small boats aren't very fuel efficient. Still, it would work if you could get the resources and organize them. The powers that be, however, aren't planning on starting anything significant until 2008 and I don't have the kind of resources doing it that way would take. I was looking for a way to get the project started earlier, using volunteers and private boats both to do something positive for the environment and, frankly, to embarrass the crap out of the officials that can't figure out a way to start dong something for two more years. Lee >> How about a surface supply hose, and a few chase boats up top. > [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] > > Lee As part of a Clean Water River Sweep clean-up weekend several years ago, I hauled a tire up from the Linville River (at the bottom of Linville Gorge, duh) to the trash truck - a vertical climb of about 1100 feet. And I did this breathing a slightly less than 21% O2 mix. Then I drank a cold beer. > Then I drank a cold beer. Only ONE? >> Then I drank a cold beer. > > Only ONE? .......at a time. LD. > .......at a time. Man evolved two hands so that he could drink more than one beer at a time... Or maybe that was just so that we could open the bottles without undue dental damage... > Man evolved two hands so that he could drink more than one beer at a > time... If we were supposed to drink more than one at a time, we'd have more than one mouth. I suspect we have two hands so that: 1. We can have another beer ready to go when the previous one runs empty, and 2. We can put our arm around a pretty woman without having to put our beer down. Lee >>Man evolved two hands so that he could drink more than one beer at a >>time... [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > > Lee You guys can drink all you want. I'm going down for more tires. > You guys can drink all you want. I'm going down for more tires. A clear example of why women will one day rule the world if we don't keep them in their place. That's a joke, folks. Lee > You guys can drink all you want. <burp> > I'm going down I always like to hear it when a woman says she's "going down"... > for more tires. Oh... Never mind... >> The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers endorsed the project; similar ones had >> been created in the Northeast and Gulf of Mexico. Broward County pitched [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > . . . at a cost of $17 per tire. The program to remove them is expected > to START in 2008. Excuse me, but what's wrong with 2006, and 2007? 2008 is when the Army COE starts construction on the new levee system for New Orleans which, coincidentally, they plan to build out of used tires. >> The program to remove them is expected to START in 2008. Excuse me, but >> what's wrong with 2006, and 2007? > 2008 is when the Army COE starts construction on the new levee system for > New Orleans which, coincidentally, they plan to build out of used tires. That kind of figures, doesn't it. It's still all about how to get rid of a bunch of f.cking tires. Lee >> 2008 is when the Army COE starts construction on the new levee system for >> New Orleans which, coincidentally, they plan to build out of used tires. > > That kind of figures, doesn't it. It's still all about how to get rid of > a bunch of f.cking tires. Sounds like a damn good way to get rid of a bunch of tires.......wonder if they could be used for fill as well? Curtis > Sounds like a damn good way to get rid of a bunch of tires.......wonder > if they could be used for fill as well? Actually, there is a company that makes a landscaping mulch out of used tires... They chip it up and remove the metal out of them and they kind of look like wood chip mulch... The intact tires tend to float upwards in a landfill, so they wouldn't work very well... I seem to remember a type of supposed eco-construction whereby the tires were packed full of dirt and walls were made from them with an adobe exterior... They were going for the thermal mass insulation philosophy, I believe... > Sounds like a damn good way to get rid of a bunch of tires.......wonder if > they could be used for fill as well? That would probably be better than dumping 2 million of them in the ocean. I suspect the problem would be keeping them from creating air spaces that would eventually collapse. We don't need more sink holes. Am I mistaken or does each of pay a disposal fee when we purchase tires? Where's that money go? Lee >> Sounds like a damn good way to get rid of a bunch of tires.......wonder if >> they could be used for fill as well? [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > >Lee Money, meet back pocket, back pocket, say hello to profit. Hmm, they sell the tires to a scrap dealer who sells them to a recylcer to sell the rubber to Goodyear or Bridgestone who sell the new tires to you. Everybody except you makes a buck on the deal. Most of the climbing gyms I use have a layer of shredded tires about 5 feet thick on the floor. One gym was a used grain silo in Carrollton. You could actually climb multiple pitches on it.  Signaturedillon If you can't figure out how to unmunge my address, email me and I'll explain it. > That kind of figures, doesn't it. It's still all about how to get rid of a > bunch of f.cking tires. Yep, from their standpoint, it doesn't do any good to get them out of the ocean if they don't have a place to store them on shore... One of the problems with storing used tires is that they collect water and thus act as a breeding ground for mosquitos... Considering the Everglades is already a breeding ground for mosquitos, perhaps it would do any more damange to just store them there... <grin> Seriously though, right now they are out of sight of most people and thus out of mind... Once you start creating a mountain of them on shore, you're going to start hearing from the not-in-my-backyard crowd... Grinding them up and mixing them with asphalt for roads might be the best bet to be able to use all of them... You know, I was just down there...same week as the Clipper Lasco reefed itself less than a mile off Ft. Lauderdale. I remember seeing an awful lot of tires on almost every dive. Some were near wrecks, so I thought maybe they'd come off those (you know, like tires on a tug boat) but a lot were just hanging out in the sand, and I saw some moving in surge in fairly shallow water. I never asked anyone, and no one else mentioned them, so I'm glad I got to see that article. -Amanda > http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/15560115.htm > > Anybody need a few used tires? Seems like this > plan was not thought all the way through.. > > Dan If they asked for volunteers they would get all they need, but as was stated the bottom feeders will be out in force. Who will be responsible when little whoever hurts his pinky, or when some 60 year old 300lb person who hasn't dove in 10 years kicks after 40 min at 65 feet. I'd go, my wife would go, but it would be a feeding frenzy with all the lawyers from Miami descending. Other than that, if we had a barge with a small crane on it, 35 ft of chain through maybe 20 tires, move on to the next bunch, another group of divers could be hooking the bundles up to the crane. By the looks of the picture each group could move about 100 tires in a 40 min dive, say maybe 40000 40 min dives to move 2,000,000 tires, 20,000 man days at 2 dives a day. Get 100 divers in the water and the infrastructure to support them, and its doable. Or maybe I'm full of sh.t (more likely) gary > http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/15560115.htm > > Anybody need a few used tires? Seems like this > plan was not thought all the way through.. > > Dan
|
Reply to this Message |
 Sign In
 Join
 My Latest Posts My Monitored Threads My Blog My Photo Gallery My Profile My Homepage Start New Thread Enable EMail Alerts Rate this Thread
|
©2008 Advenet LLC Privacy Policy - Terms of Use
This website includes both content owned or controlled by Advenet as well as content owned or controlled by third parties.