Washington school installs stormwater panel vault detention system

North Redmond, Wash. — As part of Lake Washington School District’s new Redmond Elementary School project, Oldcastle Precast Auburn was contracted to supply several hundred precast concrete panel sections for two massive detention vaults for the school’s new stormwater conveyance system.

BNBuilders Construction, BLRB Architects, AHBL Engineering and Oldcastle Precast Auburn collaborated in the creation of the new stormwater conveyance system to meet the requirements set by the Washington’s Department of Ecology.

“What we ended up doing was precasting the elements for the detention vault and craning them into place, instead of casting in place, saving us about two and one-half months, per vault, in the construction schedule,” stated a member of the Lake Washington School District Support Services Team. “We are incorporating several different measures into the stormwater conveyance system, both naturally and mechanically, to hold, filter, clean and discharge clean stormwater. The engineering behind the site stormwater system is pretty amazing.”

Oldcastle Precast Auburn provided 274 precast pieces, including flat base slabs, top slabs, and wall panels. Built between August 14-22, 2017, the north detention vault measured 44-foot-wide by 178-foot-long by various-height and the south vault, scheduled for November installation, will be 44-foot-wide by 220-foot-long by 8-foot-tall. In addition, Oldcastle Precast furnished ladders, cast iron covers, risers, grates and covers.

“Using precast provided a variety of benefits including strength, durability, and flexibility of design,” remarked Rick Roof, Project Manager of Oldcastle Precast Auburn. “Additionally, it vastly improved the construction schedule, operational efficiencies and overall quality of the detention structures for this project.”

The segmented precast stormwater vaults hold approximately 900,000 gallons of water, allowing sediment to settle, causing filtered “clean” water to be discharged to the storm drainage system. Each precast panel was sealed using hydrophobic sealer. As soon as water touches the hydrophobic sealer, the water triggers it to spread, harden, and cure between the panels, so there is no seepage. The overall construction of the precast concrete panel vault took six days.

Impervious paving will be above the precast concrete detention vaults. The stormwater will drain through pipes on the surface paving and flow into the vault.

Oldcastle Precast Area Technical Manager, Deon Lourens, remarked, “These are complicated structures and it’s great to see what our capabilities are as a company. The benefits of precast are speed, quality and versatility, which saves time and money for on-site contractors.”

“The Oldcastle Precast Auburn plant did an excellent job and made this happen! It is a great looking job! We have completed the north stormwater detention vault and the south stormwater detention vault will be installed in November 2017,” he added.

This Lake Washington School District project is one of the new elementary schools to serve the Redmond Learning Community that was included in the Long-Term Facilities Planning Task Force recommendations. The new school is built to house 690 elementary students under state-funded class size reductions.