AB® Classic – Patumahoe Hill
Patumahoe is a small town placed in the rolling hill country between the lower reaches of the Waikato River and the southern shoreline of the Manukau Harbour, 10km north-west of Pukekohe.
The project, Patumahoe Hill, is a thoroughly planned subdivision that will include 76 new residential sections, schools, a day-care centre and multiple services such as; convenience stores, restaurants & cafes, and so on, for the purpose of assisting this small growing community. As part of the program and to embellish the development, a series of long Allan Block retaining walls were designed and built on specific areas of it.
Design
The involvement of Bowers Brothers started in 2017 when the project structural engineers Blueprint Consulting contacted us interested in the Allan Block system. We provided a product presentation and a copy of the AB Walls software, which is the ultimate design tool for Segmental Retaining Walls (SRWs).
The final design was a mixture of single and terraced walls, all of them reinforced with geogrid. At certain locations, corners and curves were creatively added to the walls to meet the specific need of a section. For example, corner walls were built around distribution transformers to enclose them.
Installation
TDM Construction, who had previous experience using the Allan Block SRW system decided to hire Alicon, an Allan Block Master Wall builder, as a subcontractor to carry out the construction of the retaining walls.
After almost 10 years undertaking Allan Block projects, the Patumahoe Hill development was no different for the Alicon crew. Their massive experience on SRWs allowed them to put more emphasis on small finishing details that made a big difference. For instance, making perfect cuts on the blocks placed near the corners, or creating chamfers on the capstone used on ends.
Due to the length of the walls, which covered more than 450 linear meters, the structures were built in stages for a period of approximately 5 months.
