Plymouth at Amelia Apartments - Exterior

LRE Commercial (LRE) was called to help with the settlement issues that the Plymouth at Amelia Apartment building was experiencing. The Northern portion of buildings exterior foundation was underpinned in the past. This work was preformed by another foundation contractor. the foundation had continued to settle over time and needed to be stabilized. Bechtol Engineering preformed 2) SPT borings and 9) shallow auger borings, November 2019. It was found that there was buried construction debris and possibly an old landfill below that end of the building.

LRE Commercial retained Ramos Engineering & Associates (RE&A) to formulate a stabilization program. Using Bechtol Engineering's preliminary information, RE&A recommended using drilled piers to drill through the buried debris and bear on component soil. LRE Installed 1 drilled piers to a depth of 200 feet, without reaching soil that would support the structure. To be able to support the structure without going so deep, RE&A switched the piers from Drilled to Helical style. The 40 kip ultimate capacity was achieved by using a 10" - 12" helix configuration, with cutting teeth at the pile tip and first auger flight, on a Foundation Supportworks, FSI 288 Shaft. The torque correlation method was used, to verify that the piers were installed to a minimum 4,450 ft/lbs of torque, to achieve the ultimate 40 kip compressive loading. The pier depths ranged from 26 to 72 foot depths. After the pier installation was completed, each pier was loaded to transfer the buildings load from the ground surface to the piers.