Housing Development
The Airfields, Deeside
Situated in Wales just a couple of miles away from the English border and conveniently located next to the A494 North Wales Expressway, work has started delivering circa 800 homes for Countryside Partnerships, Bellway & Lane End including:
- Social rent homes
- Mid-market rent homes
- Private Homes for sale.
The land was the original Estuary of the River Dee before it was diverted in the early 1700’s and then became the RAF Sealand base, formerly used by the Ministry of Defence for training purposes. The site was scattered with a number of military buildings, hangars & access roads until use of the site ceased in 2006. The remaining airfield buildings were demolished in 2011 and the land was made available for development as part of the ‘Northern Gateway – Deeside’ initiative.
Careful remediation was carried out in 2019 to ensure all old ordinance was removed from site and the levels were raised up to 1.5m above existing, using an imported cohesive material that was engineered in to achieve a minimum dry density of 95%.
Initially Town & Country Vibro were the only subcontractor that assured Vibro Stone Columns would work, as it was deemed that the site had running sand. This was fount not to be running sand, but instead wet sand. Using our Bottom Feed method of Vibro to mitigate against tidal groundwater ingress, we installed all columns through this upfilled material and through the loose silty sand in the upper horizons, before terminating in the medium dense sand at around 3.5m depth.
This provided a bearing pressure of 150kN/m² at 600mm beneath the top of the piling mat, allowing our client to install nominal depth, top & bottom mesh reinforced strip foundations for all plots.
