The Province of British Columbia, Canada, has a ferry boat service between the mainland and Vancouver Island, and other coastal towns. This ferry service had become overloaded and frequently passenger and vehicle traffic was being stranded for lack of available space on the two ferries in service.
It was determined that a viable alternative to the long wait for new ferries to be built would be to add a complete new deck to the two existing vessels by cutting them in two through their length and jacking the structure up ten feet.
To avoid stress damage it was necessary to use 110 jacking points and the jacks would be required to raise within very close tolerances to each other at all times.
The actual jacking operation was required to be accomplished over a weekend to maximize the use of the dry dock facilities and to avoid interruption of the ferry service.
Modern Hydraulics, Inc., of West Chicago, Illinois, was contracted to design and supervise the construction of a 120 UnifiedTM outlet machine to control the 110 jacks that were used, each jack having a capacity of 30 tons. The machine was machined and assembled in Canada to avoid the import duties that would have had to be paid had the machine been constructed outside Canada.
Apex Industrial Movers of Canada operated the machine as the lifts were being made. The final load of 2200 tons was raised 10 feet in 8 hours.
The modified ferries had their capacities doubled for a moderate expenditure well below the cost of new ferries, with an enormous time savings over waiting for new ferries to be constructed and delivered.
This is another example of the expertise of Modern Hydraulics, Inc., in the design and construction of UnifiedTM Jacking Systems being put to good use.
