Crown Hill at Rockrimmon Open For Business

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(Free-Press-Release.com) March 5, 2009 -- Crown Hill at Rockrimmon
Interview with Chuck Helenberg

Colorado Springs, CO – Recently I had a chance to sit down with real estate developer Chuck Helenberg and talk to him about his Crown Hill at Rockrimmon development. One of the concerns I had for this neighborhood was whether or not Mr. Helenberg had built it correctly to account for the problems that other Rockrimmon neighborhoods have had to endure to this day.

What are the problems previous rockrimmon neighborhoods have had?

Oddly enough problems nobody ever thought of. There was a variety of builders in the surrounding areas then. If you drive through the neighborhoods you’ll find that some of the soil expanded causing cracked driveways, streets and sidewalks as well as some foundations coming out of the ground. Some areas have no problem at all.

The biggest problem we found was geotech engineers didn’t use the same design standards. Every one of them did it a little different and not all of them got it right. Even if they did get it right you still have to deal with the flatwork and the street.

So, we contacted the manager of CTL/Thompson and asked him if there was any solution at all to the variety of problems we see out at the rockrimmon areas. He said you can solve them and probably diminish the expansion by over excavating the whole site.

What are some solutions for the soil issues?

Everybody used a different geotech so I wanted to just use one so that the Crown Hill development didn’t have the same problems some others in the area were experiencing.

So we wanted to unify the geotech for Crown hill at Rockrimmon. CTL/Thompson will be the only geotech at the development for every builder that goes out there and that’s a given.


What is the benefit of all this soil work to the customer?

The customer will really be able to get the full benefit of the work we did on the front end. To grade that site initially would have cost around $200k but doing the over excavation on the whole site cost us $1.3million. The builder will not have to spend money on a 20k-30k over excavation on a lot. The builder will also have a unified approach towards the geotech which should minimize the chances for any potential issues down the road.

The CTL/Thompson geo techs had us dig 20ft on the whole building envelope on every lot, we removed the material, optimized the moisture content, then put it back in so any expansion is already built into the material. Most of the builders when they go to put the foundations in will only have to over excavate by 6” which is a remarkable savings. We’ve overspent but it’s built into every lot. A customer will save between 20k-30k and a week or two of building time.


Did you over excavate the entire development or just the lots?

We over excavated the lots within the envelope that is permitted to be built on the lots. We ended up digging up every lot and the streets and sidewalks, curb and gutter. So the paving will stay intact.

Compared to the surrounding neighborhoods the chance of heaving which causes cracks in curb, gutters and sidewalks, is considerably lowered. We feel confident that we’ve attacked every problem in the soils that a homeowner may run into. The homeowner gets the benefit of all the work we did even though it may not be apparent to the naked eye.

Are there any other improvements to the site that will minimize future problems?

You betcha! We have the sub drain or perforated drain system that collects any moisture around the bottom of the foundation. They call it a peripheral drain and we’ve given the builder a gravity feed that goes to a separate line system adjacent to the sewer. So if you did have a problem it’d drain away from the foundation and minimize any expansion that could happen and affect the basement.

Sometimes the lawns get over watered and on clay soils the water runs to the curb and gutter and then eventually into the asphalt which causes a failure. We’ve installed a second perforated drain system, so if there is excessive watering this drain will intercept the water before it damages sidewalks or streets. So the way we did the drains will solve a lot of the potential problems the development could have had if we hadn’t done the extra drainage work.

More information can be found online at http://crownhillneighborhoods.com

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