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Venetian "Road Works".......
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What am I looking at?
It is common practice, whenever the local government funds are sufficient, to continually dredge and repair all the canals in and around the city.
First the canal needing attention will be dredged, and then both ends of the canal will be closed off using large steel girders which are driven into the soft mud at the bottom of the canal. A heavy raft will be left inside the canal area to carry all the heavier equipment, such as a mobile crane (see the one in the video clip) and pumps will be set up to begin emptying the water from the canal to allow the restoration work to begin.
Scaffolding is erected the length of the canal on both sides, and along this will be laid down board walks from which the workmen work.
The actual repair work is done on the foundations of the buildings and pedestrian areas alongside the canals. What cannot be repaired easily with the replacement of old bricks, sometimes requires a more radical treatment which entails pumping liquid cement into the foundations. It is not unusual to see large areas of the foundation under repair, riddled with short lengths of plastic tubing protruding from the spaces between the bricks. These tubes will be used to pump the liquid cement into the crevices and spaces which cannot be reached from the outside in the normal manner.
An area such as the one in the video clip will normally take at least six months to repair, and that is providing that there are no anomalies to hold up the process.
What can happen (fortunately not too often), is that in emptying the water from the canal, the lessening of the water pressure can create problems in the structural stability of nearby buildings! More restoration to do!!
Restoration is an ongoing process in Venice which can never ease up. This goes some way to justifying the higher costs of everything here in the city.
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