Thursday, March 22, 2007

406 15th Street Armory Plaza Excavation

The Principle of Superposition and Original Horizontality



















Starting each week day at 7am, semi-trailer dumping rigs and smaller sized dump trucks wait in line for their chance to fill up with dirt. It doesn't take the excavator very long. Just a few minutes before they are full and another truck moves in to take its place. 300,000 cubic feet of misplaced soil that needs to be removed. So goes life living on the edge of what may be the largest open-pit mining operation in the entire South Slope region of these United States of America. Did you know that New York State is one of only 15 states that claims an official state soil? Who said Honeoye? Thats right! Only It's pronounced "Hay-e-a-yeah.” Our Honeoye series consists of very deep, well-drained soils formed in glacial till which is strongly influenced by limestone and calcareous shale. They are nearly level to very steep soils on convex upland till plains and drumlins. The Honeoye soil is in the Alfisols soil order and is classified as fine-loamy, mixed, active, mesic Glossic Hapludalfs. Gesundheit! God Blessed Nicolas Steno.

I can't recall ever seeing any recent building construction utilizing this particular foundation technique, then again not every new development in Brooklyn has three levels of underground parking. Most of what you see around is the standard poured in place concrete foundation cellar walls. So far the pilings seem to be holding their ground. In the mean time the earth on the 16 Street side of the fence is thawing out and continues to settle down.






1 comment:

Will said...

Such a great article it was which They are nearly level to very steep soils on convex upland till plains and drumlins. The Honeoye soil is in the Alfisols soil order and is classified as fine-loamy, mixed, active, mesic Glossic Hapludalfs. Thanks for sharing this article.