[Burnaby] Gilmore Place | 214.8m | 64fl | Phase 1 Completed

[officedweller]

By City of Rain Oct 10th:

Originally Posted by City Of Rain, post: 1489420, member: 70034

My turn

DSC04269 by Hung Lam, on Flickr
DSC04270 by Hung Lam, on Flickr
DSC04271 by Hung Lam, on Flickr
DSC04277 by Hung Lam, on Flickr
DSC04280 by Hung Lam, on Flickr
DSC04281 by Hung Lam, on Flickr
DSC04283 by Hung Lam, on Flickr
DSC04285 by Hung Lam, on Flickr
DSC04289 by Hung Lam, on Flickr
DSC04291 by Hung Lam, on Flickr

[jaykk3]

Thanks for the update. Hardly any progress

[officedweller]

You can see they've been installing big caissons / pilings into the soil.
It only seems to be at the perimeter though.
Maybe those are to support the walls, then they'll excavate then install a lot more pilings, like they did at RiverSky in New Westminster.

[officedweller]

By City of Rain Dec 1st:

Originally Posted by City Of Rain, post: 1507187, member: 70034

2 parts series

IMG_6810 by Hung Lam, on Flickr
IMG_6814 by Hung Lam, on Flickr
IMG_6818 by Hung Lam, on Flickr
IMG_6822 by Hung Lam, on Flickr
IMG_6826 by Hung Lam, on Flickr
IMG_6830 by Hung Lam, on Flickr
IMG_6837 by Hung Lam, on Flickr
IMG_6839 by Hung Lam, on Flickr

Originally Posted by City Of Rain, post: 1507891, member: 70034

More...

IMG_6841 by Hung Lam, on Flickr
IMG_6842 by Hung Lam, on Flickr
IMG_6845 by Hung Lam, on Flickr
IMG_6850 by Hung Lam, on Flickr
IMG_6854 by Hung Lam, on Flickr
IMG_6858 by Hung Lam, on Flickr
IMG_6862 by Hung Lam, on Flickr
IMG_6866 by Hung Lam, on Flickr
IMG_6870 by Hung Lam, on Flickr

[e-clam9]

Underground soil is too wet ? At Surrey, I have not seen these caissons when they dig the King George Hub and Park Boulevard. Both sites are right across from my condo, this is why I am watching them...

[Tetsuo]

Still Creek feeds into Burnaby Lake, area is very "swampy" floods often

[Marshal]

Originally Posted by e-clam9

Underground soil is too wet ? At Surrey, I have not seen these caissons when they dig the King George Hub and Park Boulevard. Both sites are right across from my condo, this is why I am watching them...

The area has a high water table + is a collection zone for water runoff. The caissons are being used to achieve the necessary bearing capacity. I don't know this project, nor what the foundation structural design is, but it is either of two options, or a combination: 1)The caissons are being sunk until they hit a strata capable of taking the loads, or 2) the caissons are being sunk deep enough in poor bearing strata that they achieve the necessary bearing through the friction between caisson and soil. Either way, they are being used to mitigate poor bearing conditions - low and unstable bearing potential.

In Surrey, they can simply excavate to (or into) material that has sufficient bearing. In those projects, standard foundation design is sufficient - it works on the principle of spreading the load over sufficient surface area (by point footings and strip footings) of stable 'strong' ground.

[cairnstone]

Actually my understanding is that the secant piles are being used as a cut off wall to prevent water migration into the site. The site is supposed to have a multi level underground parkade. Prior to that last few years the cost to develop underground parkades in high groundwater areas was to costly. So that is why you see buildings in Richmond, New west River District, and parts of Burnaby having above ground structures.

[Spr0ckets]

That's more or less what Marshal said.
But from a different route.
High water table affects the bearing capacity of the soil and the ground, and in addition creates problems with flooding and moisture penetration into the basement in the future after the structure is built (hence necessitating tanking)

Either way, the cost is still higher than regular foundation excavation (in a non-high water table area with good soil bearing capacity).
That's the main reason you don't see a lot of underground parkades in places like Richmond with high water tables.

It'll drive your construction costs to unreasonable extremes the deeper you go to the degree that you're spending the substantial majority of your construction budget on a few levels of underground parkade.
(read: it's not cheap).
In which case, you're better off sacrificing some of your above ground (valuable) buildable space in the podium for parking. Hence,.....Richmond.
Luckily for an area like Richmond, they already can't build very tall, so you're not needing a hell of a whole lot of parking like the highrise towers in other municipalities or you end up with 8 to 10 storey tall above-ground parking podiums.

There are situations when and where you have no choice but to go underground even with high water tables, but even then you're limited to how deep you can go.

Again, usually with high water table areas, the soil and ground bearing capacity is typically not very good as is, and you have to pile deeper to get to bedrock or ground structure with better bearing capacity.
So it's not only water penetration that you have to worry about.

[cairnstone]

Limiting water ingress into a site has no effect on the ground conditions. Unless you are up near QE park there is no stone rock. So friction piles or rock columns are typically used. And Richmond actually has more parking per unit than else where do to the market that exists. So in the past they built above ground podiums that had parking hidden within side of the podium. Now do to rising costs they are tanking parkades and going down 3 floors.

[e-clam9]

Originally Posted by Marshal

The area has a high water table + is a collection zone for water runoff. The caissons are being used to achieve the necessary bearing capacity. I don't know this project, nor what the foundation structural design is, but it is either of two options, or a combination: 1)The caissons are being sunk until they hit a strata capable of taking the loads, or 2) the caissons are being sunk deep enough in poor bearing strata that they achieve the necessary bearing through the friction between caisson and soil. Either way, they are being used to mitigate poor bearing conditions - low and unstable bearing potential.

In Surrey, they can simply excavate to (or into) material that has sufficient bearing. In those projects, standard foundation design is sufficient - it works on the principle of spreading the load over sufficient surface area (by point footings and strip footings) of stable 'strong' ground.

Hi, I just wonder which way is more earthquake proof ? With caissons into the solid rock foundation, or without it (like Surrey) ? I wonder if BC has high standard on earthquake building code. Thanks.

[cairnstone]

Originally Posted by e-clam9

Hi, I just wonder which way is more earthquake proof ? With caissons into the solid rock foundation, or without it (like Surrey) ? I wonder if BC has high standard on earthquake building code. Thanks.

Each building is designed to accommodate existing site conditions. All builds are built according to the building code

[Spr0ckets]

Originally Posted by cairnstone

Limiting water ingress into a site has no effect on the ground conditions. Unless you are up near QE park there is no stone rock. So friction piles or rock columns are typically used. And Richmond actually has more parking per unit than else where do to the market that exists. So in the past they built above ground podiums that had parking hidden within side of the podium. Now do to rising costs they are tanking parkades and going down 3 floors.

I really don't know where you got the impression that I said or implied that.
My point was that high water table conditions are not unrelated to the bearing capacity of the soil and ground of particular areas to the degree that it's not as easy (or cheap)to anchor your buildings to the ground in those areas.

Limiting water ingress has more to do with the structural integrity and hermetic containment of the building AFTER it's built, and in the areas of the building that are below ground where the water will come through.

And Richmond having more parking per units in buildings has more to do with the building bylaw requirement parking minimums for their municipality compared to other regions, than it has to do with them being able to build more.
In Metrotown for example you can go down 8 levels for you parking not just because the soil conditions and water table permit it, but also because you can build 53 storey towers (like Highline) which necessitate all that parking.

You obviously can't build as high as 50 storeys in Richmond, so I'm not even sure how the comparison works.
Due to building above ground parking in Richmond you're still losing above-ground sale-able and lease-able space that developers in other regions are maximizing on and profiting from.
Parking space is basically money that the developer is losing, because even though you can charge the tenants or residents for their individual parking spaces you can never charge as much as one sell the same space to a commercial, retail or office tenant in a project with non-parking podium.
And because it's a mandatory requirement to provide that parking,...then year, developers in Richmond lose that money relative to developers in other regions who put their parking in a place that would be un-sale-able or non-leasable anyway (for the most part. Some anchor tenants in commercial/mixed use developments can go underground or partially underground. Residential is a no-no)

[Tetsuo]

You also find above ground parkades for buildings in Downtown New West and Coquitlam Centre

[MetroYVR]

There will also be an underground District Energy System to heat all three towers, similar to the one found in Marine Gateway project.

[cairnstone]

Originally Posted by MetroYVR

There will also be an underground District Energy System to heat all three towers, similar to the one found in Marine Gateway project.

DES is kinda false advertising as it does not exist. Its like a lot of projects that are being built. They have to be designed for a future system that may show up. What they are is a node that will supply heat and take heat from a future system if and when it is built until then they function as a independent utility.

Currently Burnaby only has a DES operational at Simon Fraser http://univercity.ca/sustainability/neu/

[officedweller]

That may be a good thing, as district energy systems seem to be expensive to maintain and operate.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by cairnstone

DES is kinda false advertising as it does not exist. Its like a lot of projects that are being built. They have to be designed for a future system that may show up. What they are is a node that will supply heat and take heat from a future system if and when it is built until then they function as a independent utility.

Currently Burnaby only has a DES operational at Simon Fraser http://univercity.ca/sustainability/neu/

Does Burnaby have a mandate to set one up, or just require buildings to accommodate?

At minimum the developer should also be contributing a set amount for a future capital project to build the system, or it's all just for show, IMO.

[cairnstone]

Originally Posted by officedweller

That may be a good thing, as district energy systems seem to be expensive to maintain and operate.

DES is not new at all. Downtown has been on one for ever.

http://creative.energy/central-heating/

https://www.cnv.org/City-Services/Lonsdale-Energy

is up and functioning so new buildings are designed with ex changers instead of boilers

Richmond is kinda piece meal with masterplanned sites having to become nodes and also recovering energy from the waste disposal plant.

http://www.luluislandenergy.ca/what_is_de/

Then Surrey has there system around city hall that sounds like it is plagued by costing issues

[officedweller]

I didn't say it was new - I said that it was expensive (especially for newer or smaller systems that have to recoup capital costs).

Just referencing the complaints residents have had about DES service fees that are high as the energy fees on monthly bills.
($25 basic charge, I think, plus usage, at Olympic Village, and that's only hot and cold water, not hydro)

https://www.reddit.com/r/vancouver/comments/33jgu6/anyone_here_has_hot_water_and_electricity/

https://www.straight.com/article-403554/vancouver/olympic-village-energy-bills-questioned

http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=138106&page=228