 Hi, I'm Ken Hellevang, extension engineer at North Dakota State University, and as we're building sandbag dykes, it's very important that we build them correctly, and so what we're going to be walking through today are some of the basic steps on how to construct a sandbag dyke. The first thing is to create a clean base. Snow and ice need to be removed because they will melt and cause leaks. Planning is a key step. In terminal high, the dyke will need to be based on the flood prediction and ground elevation. The next step is to make sure we have properly filled sandbags to build our dyke. Fill the bags about one half full and tie the bag near the top. This permits the sand to move easily in the bag to create a good dyke. Overfilled bags and bags tied too low cannot be properly formed into the dyke and will leave gaps, allowing water to seep through. Bags do not need to be tied unless they are transported. We're going to just lay out some bags so that you can see how that process is done. Let's just say that the river is running this direction, and so we'll lay the bags in side by side. What we do is that the bags should run in the direction of the flow, so the closed end is into the water that's coming. So we go the direction of the flow. And then when we come in with the next row, there's two different ways to do it. Some will alternate rows and some just go the same direction. We'll go ahead and alternate with today's, but it's important that they be lapped so that we're building like bricks. And it's important to keep tamping them into place so that we get that tight, tight seal. If we have frozen material in the bag, and this is likely a piece of sand that is frozen, that we can't pack into place. And so that bag needs to be discarded rather than going into the sandbag dyke. And as we're working with this, what we want to do is to make sure that the width is at least twice of whatever the height is. And so as we're putting these bags in here, what we'll typically look at is if we're going to go with a two-foot high, we need at least four feet of width. We want to go to a three-foot high, we'd have to go to a six-foot. We'll just go here, I think, about a two-foot high just to show the process. So now as we come in with the next layer, again, we're coming in at an offset so that we're keeping this slope in here. This bag is covering up in between those others. We're ending up with a dyke then that is approximately two feet tall. When we start out with a dyke, that was a little bit over four feet. And so that then gives us that triangular shape that we want. The triangular shape is important because not only does that give us a wide base at the bottom where we have friction that can keep those bags from sliding, but that triangular shape then allows the water pressure to actually push down on that dyke so that it helps hold that dyke into place. Once the dyke is all built, then what you will do is to come along with plastic over the top and you want to try to create as tight a seal as you can between the soil and the plastic. The goal would be to get the plastic down on the ground on as clean as surface. Ideally, you would put down a layer of sand or clay or something, put the plastic on it and then put a row of sandbags over the top of the plastic and that then will seal the bottom. We drape the plastic up over the bags and hold it in place at the top again with a row of sandbags along the top. We put the plastic on because that really presents the water from entering into the sand. Particularly in our area where we're going to have water on these sandbags for days to weeks, sealing that surface becomes very important to help keep the water from getting into the dyke so that the plastic is the first line of defense for keeping the water from getting in. The sandbags are providing the stability and the support to hold the water back.