Soil Nail Walls – This is a rapid and economical technique for constructing retaining walls from the top down with minimal modification to existing slope geometries.
Regain Roadway Width: Project Example 1
FEMA FUNDS NEW TECHNOLOGIES FOR LANDSLIDE AND EROSION MITIGATION
This private road in Henderson County, North Carolina was severely damaged in a storm event and qualified for FEMA funding for the repair.
Looking down the slope, you can see a car that was swept away in this catastrophic slide event.
Henderson County officials selected Hobbs, Upchurch & Associates, P. A. of Charlotte to design and administer the mitigation contract. C. Brian Patnode was the
Project Manager. Piling and caissons were the traditional solutions to stabilize the site and restore the roadway width. While these techniques could be accomplished
here, piling or caissons would require drilling and the size of that equipment created a second set of problems. Access was difficult and the grades were steep.
Soil Nail Launcher, Inc. was invited to look at the project and offer a value engineering alternative. This site was ideal for our
newest technologies - Super Nails™ and Super Micropiles™ combined with a GCS™ wall. We created a foundation to competent
material below and behind the failure and then built a GCS™ wall complete with external safety railing.
TYPICAL SUPER MICROPILE™ AND SUPER NAIL™ FRAME FOR GCS™ WALL FOUNDATION. WITH THIS SYSTEM, GRS WALLS CAN BE CANTILEVERED OVER THELANDSLIDE MATERIAL
The project was completed with a new process for revegetation. With the assistance of FEMA funding, another newer technology was introduced to deal with erosion
on these oversteepened slopes.
The Soil Nail Launcher, Inc. alternative saved over $100,000 on this project and was completed in much less time.
LOOKING DOWN THE NEWLY VEGETATED SLOPE
Contact:
bob@soilnaillauncher.com
al@soilnaillauncher.com
BPatnode@hobbsupchurch.com
Regain Roadway Width: Project Example 2
NORTH CAROLINA DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION solves a major slide and saves over $100,000 with new tools and technologies.
NCDOT's Dogwood Drive near Maggie Valley experienced a total failure during a water main break. A fatality resulted from the debris overtopping a house. The
designers looked at several traditional alternatives including rock uttresses, piling, caissons and a bridge. None of these fit the location, site geometry and access.
Soil Nail Launcher, Inc. and the DOT staff designed a solution that included Super Soil Nails and a modern Geosynthetically Reinforced Soil wall founded on Super
Micropiles. This was a first for bringing together all these new tools, concepts and technologies. Savings was estimated at over $100,000; time for this construction
was about half of any of the other choices and the access roads were not damaged with heavy traffic.
These modern GRS walls are easy to build. NCDOT has built several now with their own forces and with their inmate labor.
Contacts:
John Fargher - jfargher@dot.state.nc.us
Jonathan Woodard - jwoodard@dot.state.nc.us