Cobalt Luxury Residences On King | 97.5 & 97.5m | 2 x 30 fl | Complete

[Chronamut]

I love how this thread has become 33 pages of looking at a hole lol..

sorry.. my post makes that 34 lol.

[realcity]

first post was in 2014. I don't have that long to live to see downtown turn that corner.

[LikeHamilton]

This is taking a long time to get out of the ground. There can be a lot of reasons for this. Plan may not be completely done. Found the soil not as expected and the foundation needs to be re-designed. How fast do you want to spend your money? A key player in the construction of the building that you really want is not ready. Etc.

Once out of the ground and depending on the type of construction, they can build a floor a week. The Chinese just built a 1000 room hospital in 10 days.

101 Locke Street Condos took forever to get out of the ground. They had problems with shoring and the foundation. Once out it went fairly quickly and looks great.

I think we need to be patient and expect that they know what they are doing. I would love to see at least 2 cranes there by late spring, but we will see.

I always worry that the longer it takes, the more chance it may get cancelled.

[Berklon]

Originally Posted by Chronamut

I love how this thread has become 33 pages of looking at a hole lol..

sorry.. my post makes that 34 lol.

Well it has potential to be the best damn hole this city has seen in a long timer.

[King&James]

Originally Posted by Berklon

Well it has potential to be the best damn hole this city has seen in a long timer.

Vrancor will give it a run for its money with the site on King and Queen - that is enormous and sure the City will push back on the intensification effort

[Chronamut]

Originally Posted by King&James

Vrancor will give it a run for its money with the site on King and Queen - that is enormous and sure the City will push back on the intensification effort

ehh I think it's a pretty beefy contender on its own - esp. with the old arliss building being revamped as well - I do love the concept of having 3-6 story facades ring a giant complex in the middle.It worked great with the william thomas building.

And we shall see about king and queen - those new size proposals have to still be approved. This current development at least has the advantage of being right in the core - king and queen is in the outskirts and thus won't be appreciated as intensely.

And yes, it is a very nice hole - dare I say a glorious hole. But will it be the gloriestest?

[StEC]

Not a whole lot has a changed....

[drpgq]

Two images from yesterday

[TheRitsman]

Still no major changes. Has there been any legitimate info about them being behind? Are they still working outside normal hours?

[Chronamut]

lol the inconsistency of the stone lintels on the back of that building is just hilarious - probably shoulda just rebricked and re-stoned the back while they were at it - oh well. Now there are stone pieces floating in the middle of nowhere.

And god I think this is the longest amt of time it's ever taken to make a hole..

[Innsertnamehere]

My guess is that there are water issues here, as mentioned earlier in the thread. So what they are doing is driving piles into the ground and filling them with concrete around the base of the towers. This creates a gigantic "bed" of concrete for the building to sit on to ensure it doesn't move. they are covered with dirt after they are poured though so you don't see any progress. This explains the concrete trucks seen on the site for months yet no visible poured concrete, as well as the long circular steel tubes.

They did a similar thing at The One in Toronto around the bases of the super-columns there. It's a little more pedestrian here, but a similar thing.

[NortheastWind]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

My guess is that there are water issues here, as mentioned earlier in the thread. So what they are doing is driving piles into the ground and filling them with concrete around the base of the towers. This creates a gigantic "bed" of concrete for the building to sit on to ensure it doesn't move. they are covered with dirt after they are poured though so you don't see any progress. This explains the concrete trucks seen on the site for months yet no visible poured concrete, as well as the long circular steel tubes.

They did a similar thing at The One in Toronto around the bases of the super-columns there. It's a little more pedestrian here, but a similar thing.

The piles would be part of a water-tight foundation walls made from drilled caissons (concrete pillars side by side). Once complete, they will excavate the soil to the required depth and start the rebar and concrete work. In the photos there is also a tank with a sign for Aquatech, who would have been used to de-water the area before the caissons were installed. So yes, there has been a lot going on, on site (or should I say under site).

[johnnyhamont]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

My guess is that there are water issues here, as mentioned earlier in the thread.

To what extent might the soil condition here be an indication about sites around it? Should we be expecting similar pile-driving processes (and correlating timeline demands) to be necessary at nearby future development sites? And if the soil condition is similar, to what extent would the process change based on the depth of the below-grade structure, or the mass of the above-grade structure?

[bigguy1231]

Originally Posted by johnnyhamont

To what extent might the soil condition here be an indication about sites around it? Should we be expecting similar pile-driving processes (and correlating timeline demands) to be necessary at nearby future development sites? And if the soil condition is similar, to what extent would the process change based on the depth of the below-grade structure, or the mass of the above-grade structure?

Every multi story building that has been built in that area of downtown has been built on pilings. There are dozens of underground streams running through the downtown.

[atnor]

Very cool. I always knew about underground streams but didn’t consider their effect on construction to the point where much of downtown is built on pilings.

[Skully2001]

Originally Posted by bigguy1231

Every multi story building that has been built in that area of downtown has been built on pilings. There are dozens of underground streams running through the downtown.

How come it doesn't seem to be an issue for the Effort Trust HQ which is literally across the street? Or do the underground streams mainly run east to west?

[king10]

Originally Posted by Skully2001

How come it doesn't seem to be an issue for the Effort Trust HQ which is literally across the street? Or do the underground streams mainly run east to west?

They haven’t gone above grade yet either, have they?

[drpgq]

Hole is well dug out now.

[coalminecanary]

I have been watching this project almost daily. The process they are following is insane.

First of all, before they could really get going on anything they had to arrange to bury all of the services to every property that backs onto that alley from King Street or John Street. That meant new gas lines, new bell/cogeco lines, plus new buried power to each building, and each building with its own transformer, all being fed by two new transformers that you can see if you look down the alley from John Street where the hydro poles used to be. They spent most of last summer doing this and it lasted into winter. I think the new power switched over in January sometime. The power lines were encased in tubes in a concrete sarcophagus underneath the alley. Of course when they excavated, they accidentally ripped out a bunch of foundations from the 120 year old buildings that abut the alley and had to fix those too.

Once all that was done, they got started on the foundation and it's something else... first they drill this cylinder into the ground, 1 meter in diameter and about 25-30 feet deep (yes I am using both units in one story, sorry!). Then they put the auger in and clear out the cylinder. Then they actually auger out even deeper than the cylinder - looks to be 40-50 feet deep. The auger is almost as tall as the olympia building.

Then they back a truck up and fill the hole with concrete to ground level - it looks like one truck fills maybe two of these holes - if that. So the cement trucks are coming and going the whole time.

In some of these holes, they put steel I-beams in, you can kind of get a sense of scale of the beams from my crumby photos.

A casual observer might think that they are making a series of piles to stand the building on, because they were spacing them out. But when they were done you can see that they actually put all of these concrete columns side by side and touching each other for the entire perimeter. They spaced them out presumably because they had to wait for it to cure before digging the hole immediately next to it. I can't even imagine how many cement trucks it took to do this.

See my last photo where the cylinders are visible.

Since the last photo I took, they have scraped all of the concrete off of these cylinders, exposing the surface of the I Beam that faces into the foundation. So a decent percentage of that new concrete was just shaved off by this toothy machine and carted away.

Eagerly anticipating the next phase!

[Markus83]

Originally Posted by coalminecanary

I have been watching this project almost daily. The process they are following is insane.

First of all, before they could really get going on anything they had to arrange to bury all of the services to every property that backs onto that alley from King Street or John Street. That meant new gas lines, new bell/cogeco lines, plus new buried power to each building, and each building with its own transformer, all being fed by two new transformers that you can see if you look down the alley from John Street where the hydro poles used to be. They spent most of last summer doing this and it lasted into winter. I think the new power switched over in January sometime. The power lines were encased in tubes in a concrete sarcophagus underneath the alley. Of course when they excavated, they accidentally ripped out a bunch of foundations from the 120 year old buildings that abut the alley and had to fix those too.

Once all that was done, they got started on the foundation and it's something else... first they drill this cylinder into the ground, 1 meter in diameter and about 25-30 feet deep (yes I am using both units in one story, sorry!). Then they put the auger in and clear out the cylinder. Then they actually auger out even deeper than the cylinder - looks to be 40-50 feet deep. The auger is almost as tall as the olympia building.

Then they back a truck up and fill the hole with concrete to ground level - it looks like one truck fills maybe two of these holes - if that. So the cement trucks are coming and going the whole time.

In some of these holes, they put steel I-beams in, you can kind of get a sense of scale of the beams from my crumby photos.

A casual observer might think that they are making a series of piles to stand the building on, because they were spacing them out. But when they were done you can see that they actually put all of these concrete columns side by side and touching each other for the entire perimeter. They spaced them out presumably because they had to wait for it to cure before digging the hole immediately next to it. I can't even imagine how many cement trucks it took to do this.

See my last photo where the cylinders are visible.

Since the last photo I took, they have scraped all of the concrete off of these cylinders, exposing the surface of the I Beam that faces into the foundation. So a decent percentage of that new concrete was just shaved off by this toothy machine and carted away.

Eagerly anticipating the next phase!

Thank you very much for the informative synopsis of what's been happening here. Makes much more sense as to why the length of time has occurred as it has.