After 3 years of planning, designing, value-engineering, etc., we finally broke ground on a challenging hillside development.

The client wanted to build a house on a hill with fully-grown trees overlooking a view of a distant bay, which reminded them of the house they had lived in overseas,

and that one of our projects in our portfolio captured their attention and that’s how we started.

Due to the steepness of the hill and the soils engineering report, we originally were considering caisson piles to support the structure.  However, they were cost-prohibitive.  The soils engineer was brought back to the site again, and after further investigation of the soils, we discovered that the formational soil is at shallower depth than we originally expected.  We redesigned the foundation and replaced the caissons with shallow foundation system.

EARLIER CONCEPTUAL RENDERING

Heavy duty #6 vertical dowels have been installed at the footings.

8 large footings were excavated & poured.   We are struggling with the last 4 footings due to the depth of the formational soil at these locations.

Once all the footings are set, the form work for the columns and grade beams will follow.

Concrete power floats are being applied here.

Since the concrete floor will be exposed as the floor finish, the expansion joints are needed.  Here a saw cut machine was used.

The concrete slab is completed.  We will apply colloidal silica concrete densifier via a spray pump applicator and get ready for the final polishing.

We poured the concrete today.  It was an ideal cloudy day.

The concrete is 3,500 psi, 4% slump, 15% fly ash content.

Due to the slope of the driveway entrance, we used a concrete pump for the pour.  This way, no concrete washout area was necessary.

A boom truck could not be used due to the overhead utility lines.

Concrete pour is a concerted effort.