Foundation

Early Excavation

It might seem like todays’ post should have come before yesterday’s, but I feel it’s easier to understand the pictures of the early stages of excavation at 15 Broad Street if you’ve already seen what the final result looked like. In any case, the picture above shows the beginning of excavation. Note that the site grade is already …

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Support of Excavation

There is one specific form of temporary construction that people not in the field never think of, but, when informed of its existence, immediately understand: support of excavation. People understand, without prompting, the need for protective fencing, for shoring, for temporary utilities on site, and so on. But “support of excavation” sounds weird: how do …

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Below Grade

More at 15 Broad Street, this time the 1926 foundation construction. In case the fact that they are building caissons isn’t obvious – and I’ll discuss why it is next paragraph – the big wood box on the sidewalk bridge, to the left of the Little-House-On-The-Prairie construction shack, is labelled “The Foundation Company.” The Foundation …

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A Well-Organized Site

Another of the photos of the Bank of America site at 44 Wall Street, taken from a neighboring building, looking down. The site is small and directly abuts two buildings and two streets, so the logistics of moving and storing materials was obviously a big part of construction. My guess from yesterday was correct: that’s …

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Book Review: NYC Building Code, 3, Support of Excavation

I want to look today at a single subsection in the code, where the changes are relatively subtle but very real. Unlike yesterday and Monday, this is a topic that I deal with a lot: support of excavation, usually abbreviated SoE. If that phase sounds funny, think of it as “why doesn’t the earth cave …

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