Olive Court Condominiums, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Overview: The city of Philadelphia has been in the midst of a 21st century townhouse and condominium building boom as it rediscovers its historic and cultural heritage. Such projects present a common challenge with regard to protecting adjacent historic structures. As new modern basements are extended below the old ones, underpinning of those adjacent structures is needed. In one such project, known as Olive Court, GeoStructures was hired by Taney Construction to design a safe and cost-effective underpinning system for an adjacent, historic, three-story stone masonry townhouse.
Highlights & Related Services:
Highlights & Related Services:
Support of excavation and underpinning
Foundation investigation and design
Upon inspecting the foundation wall, GeoStructures’ engineers determined that it could sustain point loads from a helical pier type of support system, which is more economical than a conventional concrete pier option. Our design called for thirteen, 12- to 15-ft long, 20-ton capacity, helical steel pier elements connected to the base of the wall using heavy duty steel brackets. Since the helical piers were spaced about every 32 in., no other connections were necessary as the wall was capable of bridging between the brackets. GeoStructures prepared design drawings, specifications, and details for the project, and oversaw settlement monitoring by the project civil engineer. We were also on-site during construction to inspect pre-augering, installation of helical piers, grouting, and jacking of the brackets to load the piers. The contractor installed the piers into the ground using a terminal torque of 8,000 ft-lb to achieve their design capacity of 20 tons. Even with the close pier spacing, this system ended up being about half the cost of conventional concrete underpinning piers.
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GeoStructures is now approved as a PennDOT Prequalified Geotechnical Drilling Contractor. ...
2021 Project of the Year
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2019 Project of the Year
GeoStructures is the proud recipient of the American Society of Civil Engineers 2019 Project of...
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