Re: LSJ Office permit

Attached is the receipt for the check and a copy of the permit for the office.

If the reference you have made below is to Yacht Haven, I have some knowledge of the project. The numbers given to you there are not very meaningful with respect to your project.

As we recall it, the docks are pre-cast concrete tees manufactured in Trinidad set on piles topped with a small amount of grout. I doubt that the number of cubic yards quoted below includes the cubic yards of concrete placed in the Presticon forms in Trinidad when the tees were cast although it may include the grout.

The Yacht haven buildings themselves are either block or steel stud. In the steel stud buildings concrete is needed only for the slabs. In the block building concrete would be limited to slabs, bond beams and perhaps grouting. The terrain of the project is absolutely flat. I believe, therefore, that the slabs were place on structural fill created by the crushing of the old structures.  For this reason the designs did not require substantial footings or structural concrete walls or “stem walls” below grade to carry the structures or deal with changes in elevations. I am not sure, but it is my belief that few new cisterns were built since the project is served by WAPA water. I am aware of only one pool on the premises.

Your project has at least five cisterns, three pools, substantial structural slabs, enclosed and not enclosed, retaining walls and walled garden areas and significant amounts of hardscape. All of the structures require substantial footings and structural walls for below ground level cisterns or to support decks and structures above on the shifting terrain.

I respectfully suggest that your project is not comparable to Yacht Haven where the terrain was much more favorable and the building skins were much more cheaply constructed and in many cases much lighter using different materials from your project.

In making projections for your project we had to look to the future before we had final structural designs for the pool expansion, the library, or the main house from which we could do precise quantity surveys. Accordingly, footing sizes and slab thicknesses, among other things, are not known for the buildings and structures which comprise more than 70% of the overall project. In order to compensate we had to come up with some sort of method to project quantities. Moreover, it was prudent to use worst case results for planning purposes. Here is what we did.

We do have a completed design for the office, exclusive of related hardscape. This structure has both a pool and cistern and decking which require some fairly heavy footings. It has structural and stem walls which carry the structure from below the existing grades. We have done a complete quantity survey of this structure and we know that it will require 620 cubic yards of concrete.

Since we have plan views and elevations for balance of the work we do know the wall height and areas and the square footages for the foot prints of the entire buildout of each of the designs for each of the remaining buildings. Each of these buildings will have structural elements similar to those for the office. The main house in particular will be constructed on a site where the elevation changes substantially. The square footage numbers for the foot prints, confirmed by the architects, broke out pools, covered and uncovered space and hardscape. Our studies of water needs and projections for water needs gave us the locations and relative sizes of cisterns needed at the each of the uses. Each of the proposed designs for the various uses had essentially the same elements as the office expansion, structural slabs below grade, two stories essentially, pools (with the exception of the library), cisterns and so on coupled with grouted masonry construction. We felt safe, therefore, in projecting probable concrete consumption for the balance of the buildings, based upon square footages carried or framed by the same structural elements as the office complex and what we knew about the heights and masses of the masonry wall systems.

Using these factors we projected concrete at 15,000 cubic yards.

As a check we looked to the Pond Bay estimate where had a complete take-off and estimate of every one of the buildings, all of the hardscape and so on because the design is complete for the project. We took out the quantities in the bungalow walls since an ICF wall system was used there, instead of block and compared the concrete consumption on a square foot basis for the units and hardscape. The Pond Bay site is completely flat so that each building is constructed on thickened edge slabs not footings and stem walls. The original design, however, did have footings and small stem walls which were taken off before we switched to thickened edge slabs to save concrete, so we had information to help us add this kind of structure back into the final Pond Bay estimate.

The current quantity survey for Pond Bay shows 11,000 cubic yards of concrete for the structures and hardscape with an allowance item for retaining walls which is 4,000 cubic yards. Your project has more pools and more cisterns than that of Pond Bay which has one pool. The Pond Bay cubic yard analysis does not include one large 250,000 gallon cistern which is already constructed and which will be reused in the new project both as a cistern and the foundation for one of the buildings.

Your project will require footings and stem walls, not thickened edge slabs as in the case of Pond Bay , items which compensate for the reduction of the concrete in the Pond Bay wall systems. Pools and cisterns had to be added to the totals after backing out. If these differences were factored into to the Pond Bay project the total projection the result confirmed our projection for your project for the purposes of computing barge traffic.

One thing to remember: our projection of concrete was generated for the purposes of a trip analysis, not cost comparisons.  The projected volume of concrete might be too high, or if it is accurate, the quantity could dictate that we consider precasting using other mixes of materials for the partially designed work to speed construction and save money. Going this route, however, will have little or no impact on projected barge trips because what is not carted out to LSJ in the form of concrete will be replaced with comparable volumes of pre-cast or other materials.

I hope that this note addresses your concerns.