I was in Irvine and decided to drive over to one of our job sites in Orange County. I was surprised to see this grading project, the Ferrari and Maserati of Newport Beach service center open for business.
What a pleasant surprise to see the building completed, parking lot regraded, and all the drainage devices in place. But really I was like a kid in the candy shop when I spotted the cars parked inside. This project has been one of my most favorite projects I have worked on in my career, as I went into engineering purely based on looking at the Acura NSX while in school. As I started college at UC Irvine, I would always see Ferraris and Lamborghinis driving around the campus area. From that point on I have been a fan of Formula1, racing, and cars in general. This project was something special, almost bringing a tear to my eye. The Architect was great to work with and he also designs the interior spaces for a lot of the exotic car shops in Southern California. Go figure that myself, my partner and he all went to High School together. I think most people can appreciate fine Italian Exotic cars, and I know all of us were excited to work together on this site.
So what did we do on this project? We had the chance to regrade the parking lot. But not just any regrade, we needed to keep as much of the existing as possible to make this site cost efficient; a typical requirement on every Civil Engineering project that we take on. I also try to design based on low cars driving around and this would be my chance where this would make even more sense than usual. We kept the drainage pattern nearly the same. Though we did have to adjust portions to make the ADA walkways and ADA parking stalls to have the maximum 2% in all directions. That was very difficult to work out between the front door to the ADA walkway going to the sidewalk. Once the walkway worked with the parking stalls we added a new curb and gutter to the side of the driveway fronting the street. That curb and gutter would lead to a catch basin that would flow about half of the site through pipes outletting into the street’s storm drain system.
On the front of the property we removed some of the existing swales to keep the ADA paths as smooth as possible. I would have preferred to completely remove all of the swales in the way of parking cars, but we were able to minimize the brutal existing drainage layout. Brutal as in driving a cushy car over the existing swales would make the car hop up and down. Now its possible to get into a parking spot without going over one of those swales. The other driveway entrance was regraded to smooth everything out. We decided to use the existing downspouts and have them outlet directly onto the driveways. No need to have some complicated system to drain under the parking lot, like we would design for an area with purely pedestrian traffic.
Onto the back of the property a ramp was created as one of the existing loading docks would not be used. There would also be a proposed wash off area that needed to separate the stormwater from the dirty water. This can sometimes be tricky as stormwater is not allowed to enter the sewer system, and dirty water isn’t allowed to enter the storm drain system. Not to mention that this loading dock area had some really crazy grades to make a truck able to back in. So we tied into the flattest parts of the back driveway and regraded to flatten the pad out. Another issue that popped up was an existing pump that took out all of the stormwater out of the low points. This grate on top of the pump became our tie in elevation. After tying everything together we needed a way to separate the areas of the water. So we created a minimal swale between the parking and wash area. The end result was executed perfectly. I got a chance to see the swale in action. The wash area goes into a trench drain, then into a clarifier that cleans out the junk as much as possible and then goes into the sewer system.
After seeing the completed project I am very happy to see everything built to our design. I got to quickly walk through the building and know I had the biggest smile on my face during this unexpected site visit. Thank you to the service manager for letting me walk through the building instead of around to take pictures. The inside is spotless.
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We planned to go to the finished job site on the right day. I was hoping for more rain but at least we got to see everything working correctly. The parking lot looks as nice as it can look. The storm water properly drains into the trench drain and catch basins. They have installed an interesting device in their cleaning area. A valve can change based on rain and either send stormwater to the street or the vehicle cleaning water into a clarifier which then goes to the sewer.
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I got the call today and it looks like our project in Sun Valley is finishing up.
After the rain they plan to stripe the parking lot. I am excited to visit the job site as there is a nice big infiltration unit under the parking that will be infiltrating the 3/4″ storm underneath the parking lot, before the stormwater overflows into the street. The infiltration has been designed to use a series of Atlantis Raintanks that have been placed into an excavated section of the newly created parking lot. There will be large catering trucks parking on half of the lot. The entire site has been designed to completely sheet flow the stormwater off of the property in case any trenchh drains or catch basins clog after the tanks fill up completely.
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I decided to stop by the job site for our project in Sun Valley to answer a few questions for Chef Robert Catering, and what was I greeted with? A rough graded parking lot, that had a good size cut out of the existing topography. The site was currently being staked to get ready for the installation of the Atlantis Infiltration Tank system and the precise grading to pave the new asphalt concrete parking lot.
I had a chance to speak to the surveying crew staking the site today and they were on top of things. They had a few questions which will make the drainage for the site that much better. With the way the existing parking lot was sawcut, the proposed 3′ wide swale will have the chance now to be at straight grade. Also we were able to clarify a couple of elevations to make sure we were on the same page.
Every single consultant and especially our client, Chef Robert Catering, has been a pleasure to work with. I can’t wait to head back out to Sun Valley next week to get some pictures of the hole that will be excavated to install the Atlantis Infiltration Tank underground. The precise grading and paving should be following shortly after.
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ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) ramps are one of those necessary designs for new projects that sometimes make a new project that much more complicated to work.
These ADA ramps are meant for those who are disabled for easier access to their destination. ADA requirements are meant to help those in need and are important for those who would have trouble getting around. Design wise anything ADA related can be very tricky to work properly with every other requirement. For a Civil Engineering grading plan, we concentrate on how easy it is to walk around a project, drive around that project, and most importantly how stormwater is handled. We are given a siteplan most of the time with rough elevations that an Architect has come up with and must design to the exact existing topography to have a real world working project. We recently went back and forth on a current project with an Architect on how to handle a parking area. We came up with a 6″ curb in front of the building that would turn into a 0″ Curb Face as we transitioned the driveway slope down to street level. This design turned out to be more complicated.
As I keep walking to supermarkets and other larger box stores that have these huge slopes at random places because not enough thought was put into grading the parking lot. Not only do these parking lots look strange, but anything other than an SUV you can hear the suspension creaking on the funny grade breaks. A large part of some of these parking lots deep drops are caused by the design of ADA ramps at the parking stalls.
I took a couple of pictures while at some local stores to give an idea of how a properly designed ADA ramp looks. What I didn’t take pictures of are the very hard to drive parking lots, that are not striped with the steep grades or oddly placed speedbumps in mind. That is for another blog post.
Next time you drive around and park at your favorite store pay attention to the ADA spots as those have generally had the most design thought put into the grading plans. These spots tie the building pad elevation to the street in such a way that they can be considered a proof on how to properly design a development. You must be no more than 2% sloped in all directions in these ADA areas otherwise your building to parking lot to street connection will either not work or be very oddly warped.
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We got a call from a catering company needing a Civil Engineer for a grading plan.
I was given an overview of the job quickly over the phone to learn what the job entailed. My first question to myself was how do I get out there to the job site fast enough as they wanted a Civil Engineer to get started on the plans asap. I was able to get out of a prior meeting looking at property and made my way to the site. After meeting the client, we went over what was needed. Regrading the dirt lot to incorporate added parking into their existing parking lot was the main idea. I told him he would need to hire a Surveyor and Geotechnical Engineer to get the required information we would need to get our plans started. We are in the beginning stages of design. The footings of the three buildings next door have caused some issues with where their footings are located in relation to the live load that the catering trucks would exert.
The next issue to tackle was regarding the new LID (Low Impact Development) requirements that took effect May 12, 2012. Before Los Angeles City Wastershed used SUSMP (Standard Urban Stormwater Mitigation Plan) for their stormwater management requirements. The LID is the preferred approach to stormwater management by the RWQCB, SWRCB, and US EPA. To meet these requirements, we need to take the first 3/4″ storm into infiltration tanks. So besides needing a Geotechnical Engineer too verify the soil is okay to pave over, we also need them to preform a percolation test to see if the soil where the infiltration tanks will sit, can actually allow water to percolate at an Los Angeles City approved rate.
At this point in the project the Civil Engineer must make sure that everyone is on the same page regarding the site plan layout, the geotechincal report, and that all of this matches up to the survey.
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Our Culver City project on Sepulveda and Washington Blvd., Culver Crossroads, is finally entering the stages of staking.
Nothing out of the ordinary on this project. The property used to be a car dealership split up into multiple lots. The lot will be reconfigured into a renovated Building and a completely new Building, with a large parking lot to accommodate both buildings. We have gone through a couple of iterations based on costs associated with building the parking lot. The grading plans have almost come full circle from the different options that we have tried to go with through the life of the project. In the end this looks like a great location for what’s about to go in and is a heavy traffic area.
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I needed to get some more answers for a project in Sun Valley.
Last time I had some questions, I went down to Los Angeles Building and Safety and was slowly handed from counter to counter until I found what I was looking for. All the while getting more feedback that was all very helpful. I ended up at the final counter and had my SUSMP questioned answered immediately which was a relief as sometimes government agencies can send you in circles.
Getting the circle was bound to happen sooner or later. This time the circle happened to be sooner than later. I was looking for setback requirements for a grading plan just in case there was anything that I was overlooking regarding our project. I went to zoning with a siteplan and topo. They gave me some useful information, but nothing that I was looking for. Then I went down to grading. I got some more useful information but nothing that I was looking for. After being told to go back to where I started I realized that sometimes there is a place and time to track down information, and sometimes there is a place and time to submit the plans and let the plan checkers do their job. This time the plan checkers will be checking our work, as the information I was searching for has too many variables to provide me the answer that I am looking for. One day I will see just how many tickets I have collected over the years and make something useful with them. Maybe an engineer‘s scale out of the mulched up q-matic stubs?
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The rain was pretty nice today and I had to get a picture of a swale in a parking lot, at Plummers Furniture, that was flowing towards a clogged catch basin. The overflow was going over the driveway and out to the flowline against the curb, to where it needs to go to not cause any flooding.
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The Grammys are today. Did my usual run and decided to take some pictures of everything going on around Staples Center and LA Live today.
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