A short distance off the shore of Dubai lie four remarkable islands in the form of giant palm trees: Palm Jumeirah, Palm Jebel Ali, and Palm Deira, still under development. Each consists of necks of land extending from a trunk attached to the Dubai seashore, and topped further outward by a long seawall for shelter. It must have taken very many geotechnical consultants to make the needed examinations of the site’s seabed, each geotechnical consultant an expert in seabed engineering. Because making an island from loose undersea sand will require a lot of engineering know-how even before anything can be put down on record, before making any tangible construction.

The Palm Jumeirah Crescent or jetty is just 13 feet above the sea level at low tide, and ascends from 34 feet of water at its deepest site. Its engineers contend that it is high enough not to go below surface in the going up of the sea level should global warming truly happen, or any tsunamis that might form in the Persian Gulf. The jetty is made from rocks taken from the mountains. At its base is sand covered by a geo-textile or woven mesh to inhibit the sand from flowing out. Anchoring down this ‘wrapped’ sand is a stratum of one-ton boulders, over it two strata of six-ton stones sit to form the top part.

The isthmuses extending from the middle avenue are made also from sand dredged from the seafloor and then vibro-compacted to bear buildings. Palm Jumeirah was made from 3,257,212,970.389 cubic feet of sand. Vibro-compacting is performed by saturating the sand with water then shaking it via drills to make the sand move more densely. initially a probe is buried into the sand sub-surface through water saturation and vibration. As the probe sinks to its desired depth, loose sand is tossed down into the cavity made by the vibrator probe. Thus a denser zone of sand is made, enough to hold up structures.

However, vibro-compaction may be appropriate only in uncontaminated sand where fine clay matter forms only 15% maximum.

In each peninsula or frond are two rows of residential estates or buildings for the really rich, and anybody can buy his place there. Palm Jumeirah is expected to house 120,000 residents and laborers, plus a different 20,000 tourists each day. So it is not truly a small island where solitude can be found, but a gigantic self-contained suburbia of the truly, really billionaires. There are at present people living in the islands: real property owners, transients, speculators and laborers making finishing touches to a few parts of the reclaimed areas. A six-lane highway today functions as the transportation artery in and out the fronds, but in the last stages, residents will also be serviced by a monorail.

Palm Jumeirah and the three other man-made islands exemplify what modern engineering supported by a lot of money can accomplish. While reclamation from the sea to make islands may not be a novel idea because it has been made numerous times before, the project’s enormous size makes it so.

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Filed under: Chula Vista Real Estate Inspection

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