This new housing development by Bellway is located on a flood plain. Due to the flood risk, this meant the site levels needed to be raised by an average of one meter over the whole site to mitigate the risk.
As this site required engineered foundations, a significant amount of crush material would have needed to be imported to facilitate the piling. As this isn’t a cost-effective solution Bellway approached us for an alternative. We proposed our Housedeck system using our low track pressure midi piling rigs. This allowed the fill material to be changed to an engineered cohesive sub-soil, offering significant savings in material costs.
Using cohesive sub-soil would usually require a top layer of crushed fill to mitigating against surface degradation to support the piling rigs. However, due to utilising our midi rigs, we were able to use our Concrete Working Surface (CWS) instead, adding to the material cost savings.
There were several plots located inside the zone of influence of existing trees and in conjunction with the Site Investigation (SI) report it was thought there was a risk of future heave.
We carried out a detailed review of the SI report and due to the near-surface alluvial deposits and high water table, we did not believe the risk of future heave was significant. To omit heave precautions we corresponded directly with the warranty provider to gain prior approval before starting on site. This resulted in further cost savings as no heave mitigation was required.
“Abbey Pynford’s common sense approach has allowed us to rationalise our approach to foundations in complex ground conditions, saving both time and money on our projects.”
Michael Collins, Commercial Manager, Bellway
