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| Expert Florida Marine Contractor called in to rebuild the wall  After a major seawall failure, Emerald Lakes, an upscale lakefront manufactured homeowners' association in Clermont, Florida hired Fender Marine Construction to replace a portion of the seawall. The HOA had thousands of feet of the aluminum wall also called a bulkhead installed in 2009 by a Central Florida Building Contractor who also works at marine construction. The wall was not properly installed as the toe of the wall was not embedded in the firm layer of soils located approximately 12 feet below the top of the shoreline protection system or bulkhead. The bulkhead was apparently engineered, as a City of Clermont building permit was obtained. But it is also apparent that there were no soils borings taken or probes by the contractor to determine the soil stratum elevation information.Emerald Lakes is located on the West side of US 27 in Clermont on the Clermont chain of lakes. The marinathat is surrounded by this failing seawall is in a manmade lagoon that was dredged in order to build up the land for the manufactured home sites. The original Central Florida contractor installed 12' long AWL 100 aluminum interlocking panels which did not reach the firm soil layer below. When the rains came recently, approximately 100 feet of the wall became overloaded with water pressure building up behind the wall. At that point the 6' of muck soil that the toe of the sheets were embedded into moved lake ward allowing the toe of the wall to fail and the soil behind the wall to cave in. Fender Marine Construction, a Florida State Certified Marine Contractor was selected by the Lake Emerald Home Owner's Association to correct their marine construction problems. Fender Marine Construction's Vice President Rick Fender is not only a Florida State Certified Marine Contractor, he also serves on the Board of Directors for the prestigious Florida Marine Contractor's Association. The FMCA is a collection of the top marine contractor from across the State. Every member is checked for their appropriate licensing, experience and insurance and they must be sponsored before they can be accepted as members of the FMCA. The 110 feet of wall that is now being replaced by Fender Marine was not the first area of the massive length of seawall to fail. When the first failure occurred in 2011, the wall failed on the side of the lagoon opposite from this current failure. At that time, the HOA selected another residential dock builder from Winter Park to perform the seawall repair. This time, the wall was engineered properly and geotechnical borings were performed. The new design required the use of 16 foot long AWL100 light duty seawall panels. However, when the Winter Park contractor installed the 16 foot sheets by jetting, their installers encountered the "hardpan" dense clayey and sandy soil layer at 12 foot deep below the top of the wall. Instead of utilizing a vibratory hammer and heavy equipment to drive the bottom 4 feet of the wall panels into the stable soils, they simply cut the extra 4 feet of the top of the panel off, failing to properly embed the toe of the wall panel. This resulted in there being no portion of the wall embedded in stable soils. Now the wall repair performed 2 years ago is failing as well. Fender Marine Construction removed 110 Lineal Feet of the existing seawall as can be seen on the seawall. Based on Fender Marine Construction's soils analysis and their engineer's recommendation, they installed 20' long PZM 160 aluminum sheet pile which is a much heavier and more substantial sheet pileprofile. This change from the original design resulted in the heavier sheet's toe being embedded from 5' to 7' into the dense soil layer below the unsuitable muck soil layer. This suitable soil embedment will result in the seawall longevity that the homeowner's association paid for several times. Fender Marine Construction then added additional tiebacks and deadmen to support the replaced wall. The HOA will now have a wall they can depend on for many years to come. write your comments about the article :: © 2012 Construction News :: home page |