It is true. New Jersey is a barrier in Spain. I saw it with my own eyes. Bear with me and I will explain.
When I travel internationally I find the people, cultural and language differences fascinating. Last month I was fascinated once again. My blog last month was written while on an airplane as I travelled to Europe (see my July blog When Pipe Stress Analysis Meets Waterhammer Hydraulics: New Waterhammer Guidelines for Engineers). Before going to the ASME PVP conference in Prague (check out this video one of our staff made) I stopped in Spain for 4 days. While there I was fortunate to visit the location of an AFT Impulse project by one of our customers that was a Platinum Pipe Award Winner this year. This case study was published in April. See AFT Impulse™ Matches Data For Pumping Station Check Valve Closure. That pump station photo in the case study is where I visited. Below is a photo of me and the PPA winner David Lozano Solé of AQUATEC – SUEZ Group. For those interested, this project is being presented as a technical paper by David at the 2018 Pressure Surges Conference in Bordeax, France in November. I will be there to help and also present two other papers of my own. So where does New Jersey come into this?
The day after David took me to the Tibidabo pump station we went up into the agricultural area of the Catalonia region to the city of Tàrrega. That is near where I saw the New Jersey barriers.
Below you can see my new friend Pedro Santos with his foot on "a New Jersey". That is what they call construction-type barrier blocks in Spain. Pedro works for ASG and is the author of a very cool software program called SIGOPRAM used for agricultural/irrigation applications. Below the photo is a video of me talking with Pedro about the New Jerseys. They had no idea that Americans do not call these New Jerseys too. At left in the red shirt is Gustau García of AFT's Spanish Channel Partner Catalonia Engineering Solutions. I took the photo and video so alas am not in them. The final photo after the video shows me at the pumping station located just next to the New Jerseys.
One has to wonder what it is about New Jersey that anyone would connect with a barrier block? Any guesses?
