Ascenté is a single-family residential project located in Washoe County, Nevada. The project includes approximately 202 single-family houses constructed on both flat and split-level pads, a water tank and booster pump station, detention basins, rockery and CMU retaining walls, roadways and sidewalks, underground utilities, and landscaping.
ENGEO prepared the design-level geotechnical report and structural plans for the CMU and rockery retaining walls. The rockery walls included geogrid–reinforced slopes to meet current building code seismic requirements. ENGEO is currently providing geotechnical testing and observation services during mass grading and special inspection services during CMU and rockery retaining wall construction.
Geotechnical concerns that impacted the development included hillside grading in steep terrain and stability of complex rockery walls retaining supporting engineered fill.
Due to the hillside topography, we prepared corrective grading plans based on the final civil design. Corrective grading plans graphically depict our geotechnical recommendations related to keyways, benches, cut/fill transitions, overexcavation of building pads, and differential fill overexcavation. To prepare these plans, we overlayed the grading plans with graphic representations of our corrective grading and subsurface drainage. This allowed hillside grading recommendations to be clearly displayed on the grading plans and assisted in obtaining more accurate earthwork estimates and contractor bids.
To improve the stability of rockery walls planned in fill conditions, and due to the high seismicity of the region, we designed the retained soil as a geogrid reinforced slope with a rockery facing. This allowed for the aesthetic benefits of rockery walls to be realized on the project in locations where solely relying on the mass of the rocks for structural support was not feasible from an engineering perspective.
