TEMPO-DAM ® fast, strong, safe & stable!
Key benefits of the TEMPO-DAM ®
- The TEMPO-DAM ® is designed for extreme weather and has been wave and stability tested. Please read more about the test here. Other competitors need sandbags and sealant under the front end to withstand waves.
- The TEMPO-DAM ® is one of the fastest mobile dams in the world. Deployment speed 1-5 km/hour.
- It is Danish quality and ingenuity.
- The materials are first class, but especially the high-tech rot proof sowing tread is the best you can get. The tread is the most important component in the entire dam, and no one we know has this thread, probably because it is 30 times more expensive than the normal high-quality tread.
- The Velcro joints have a special sealing system, that makes them much more water tight compared to our competitors.
- We have extra safety features for the extreme weather versions.
How does it work?
The TEMPO-DAM ® is a triangular barrier of tarpaulin, that can be connected to create one long temporary dam.
It works by the water running on to the barrier, filling and raising the triangular part of the barrier by the force of the water. The weight of the water presses the barrier down to the ground and stops the barrier from moving / sliding / being pushed by the water.
An example with the T80 dam:
Water weighs approximately 1000 kg pr. cubic meter. The TEMPO-DAM ® T80 with a retention height of 80 cm, has 2150 kg of water pr. 1 meters of barrier when it is completely full.
Approximately half of the load of 2.150 kg of water can be transferred to the ground via friction, so the force the barrier can withstand in optimal conditions is approximately 1.100 kg.
Static / still water will try to push the barrier with 400 kg of force, and in waves the force will roughly be double. Now conditions are never optimal, so we need every bit of safety margin we can get, and this is the design basis we have built TEMPO-DAM ®.
Normal triangular dams will not be able to withstand waves, and sometimes they can’t even withstand still water. This is because water under the barrier will cancel out the pressure difference and cause the barrier to loose the amount of water ballast the barrier can use for stability. The TEMPO-DAM® does not have this problem.
WARNING: The TEMPO-DAM ® has a unique construction, that insures a very high stability, and using other dams in conditions mentioned here, can and will probably lead to catastrophic results.
Deployment speed
The TEMPO-DAM ® is one of the fastest mobile dams in the world. The deployment speed is between 1-5 km/hour.
The dams can be rolled out manually one by one and connected to one long dam.
The dams can also be connected and prepacked in a “quick deployment crate”. This makes the deployment much quicker, because you use the preparation time before the flood, and only spend time rolling it out on site.
Quick deploy crate with prepacked dams
Model overview – Sizes and types:
TEMPO-DAM / Basic / stable:
Designed for still water and small waves 10-15 cm. It can be used in flowing water with currents, but there might be some overflowing in different locations. It can be used in windy conditions.
This model is the version that is most similar to the other triangular dams, except for the stability feature and other details.
- The basic model is our basic version but is still one of the most stable dams of this triangular type in the world. It is stable because of the special bottom part og the dam.
- The dam has 1 kg/meter ballast weight on the leading edge.
- The top edge has a small float, so a little bit of overflow different places must be expected to occur just like our competitors, unless one uses small poles in the partitions, to hold the barrier up.
- The Velcro joint that connects to barriers together, is made significantly more leak tight.
Extra big floats give freeboard
- Extra big floats can be ordered for any model. They are mounted by the top edge. These floats reduce the risk of overflow drastically, and when the water level reaches approximately 80 % of the retention height, the float will lift the top part of the barrier and give it a freeboard. This feature is not available for permanent fixing on the T25 and T40. The floats make the barrier more voluminous when packed, and ads 6,5 kg. to a 10,2 meter barrier.
TEMPO-DAM / XTREME WEATHER / waves:
Designed for waves up to 35 cm and against flowing water with currents. It is not designed for windy conditions.
- This model is like the basic / stable.
- The Velcro joint that connects to barriers together, is made significantly more leak tight.
- The barrier is strengthened against tears in strategic places, because of the repetitive wave forces that may occur over many hours.
- This model has 2 kg/meter ballast weights on the leading edge.
TEMPO-DAM / XTREME WEATHER / wind & waves:
Designed for waves up to 35 cm and against flowing water with currents. It is designed for very windy conditions
- This model is like the basic / stable.
- The Velcro joint that connects to barriers together, is made significantly more leak tight.
- The barrier is strengthened against tears in strategic places, because of the repetitive wave forces that may occur over many hours.
- This model has 2 kg/meter ballast weights on the leading edge
- This model has wind hooks, so the barrier will not fully inflate if the wind should catch it before the deployment team is ready for full inflation. When the weight of approximately 5-15 cm of water is on the dam, the deployment team can loosen the wind hooks, and the dam can raise to its full height.
The tarpaulins:
The top tarp is a PVC coated Polyester fabric, that is flame retardant and lacquered with an acrylic lacquer. It is therefore UV, weather and saltwater resistant. Furthermore, it is more dirt resistant than traditional tarpaulins.
The black partitions are made of HDPE with a protective coating. They are UV, weather and saltwater resistant.
The bottom tarp consists of several layers of PVC combined with a Polyester base fabric of high strength yarn. These single layers give flexibility, elasticity, airtightness and resistance against mechanical damage. The fabric is abrasion resistant, dirt-repellent, UV and weather resistant and the tarp is designed for daily marine use.
The thread:
The thread is a high-tech tread that no other barrier producer uses. It is approximately 30 times more expensive than a normal high strength and good quality polyester thread, but it is also approximately 3 times stronger against damage from dragging over the ground.
The thread cannot rot and is not degraded by saltwater or sun. The thread will last longer than the fabric and the thread manufacturer supply’s a 15 years guarantee to TEMPO-DAM ® (according to their conditions). If the thread is not rot, UV and saltwater proof, the threads may brake under pressure if the dam is used after being packed down and left damp for years.
The Velcro for connecting the barriers:
The Velcro we use is incredibly strong. You can easily peal the layers from each other, but there is no way you can pull them from each other.
The Velcro that connects two T80 dams together have a collected gripping power of more than 14 tons when new. After being used 100 times the gripping power is reduced to approximately 4 tons.
The barriers are not intended to be used more than 100 times in their lifetime, but if they are used that much, 4 tons of combined gripping power is more than enough to keep the barriers together under the toughest of conditions.
Other manufacturers of triangular dams of tarpaulin use a different type of Velcro, that does not have near the same characteristics as the TEMPO-DAM ®.
Ballast:
The ballast is placed on the leading edge to keep the dam down in wind and water. The basic model has 10,25 kg. of ballast sewn on. The extreme weather dams have 20,5 kg. of ballast. Please note that half of the ballast in the extreme versions can be detached from the dams for easier handling when cleaning and drying.
Comparing the TEMPO-DAM ® to water tube barriers:
Water tubes is a barrier type that is filled with water. They demand a great amount of water and pumping capacity. They are stable against wind when they are full but can be difficult to lay out in windy conditions. The water tubes also demand more personnel for a longer time period, with more speciality knowledge and training to deploy the system. Our system is simple and can be deployed fast.
Water tubes are sensitive to high water levels, currents, waves, sharp objects, slippery surfaces, impacts and punctures. Many water tubes that have a maximum water retention height of 80 cm, are 120 cm high.
If the water level exceeds 80 cm or approximately 70%, the manufacturers state that the water tubes will be at risk of failing. This means that the entire body of water can flow in and the ice-cold water will endanger the lives of the emergency personnel and citizens. The fact that they become unstable at high-water levels, makes the usage more complicated, because the water level predictions must not change for the worse after deployment.
If one of the two tubes puncture and losses pressure the dam may fail. This is stated on the manufacturers websites and has happened here in Denmark several times.
If the water level is higher than the TEMPO-DAM ®, the water will just flow over. We have tried this in the wave test facility and it kept stable.
We have tried to simulate a puncture and separated to dams, but they stayed stable. The water just flowed in, and the hole was easy to block with sandbags.
The TEMPO-DAM ® will also outlast most of the water tubes with 2-3 times, which also must be considered when customers compare purchasing prices.
We se many advantages over the water tube barriers, and this is why we have invested in this type of barrier.
Warranty:
We supply a 2 year warranty for manufacturing defects, according to our warranty terms. Please contact us to learn more about our terms.
The production and quality:
A Danish production company has been tasked with the manufacturing. The fact that it is a Danish company tasked with the production, also means that we are confident with the high-tech production facilities they have and the Danish level of quality.
Before the dams are shipped out from the factory they undergo a quality check and are given a unique number. This number ensures that the materials used in the barriers, are traceable. We would like to stress that the tarpaulin suppliers also have a rigorous quality control, so expect never to have issues with the tarpaulins.
The productions company is ISO certified.
One of the amazing seamstresses hard at work.
CNC Precision Cutting Table