Removal of soil nails 2

[snsl123]

I am not a geoengineer, but I have some geoengineering questions and I hope you don't mind me posting it here. As part of a construction project next to our house (they are building a house), a shoring company began drilling grouted, threaded soil nails into the hillside between our two houses. In weeks prior, an excavation company had excavated all the earth in the side yard next door right up to our property line, which left a 20' drop to the property below where they are building the house (we are on a hillside). In order to prepare for a retaining wall, the shoring company began drilling these nails into our yard, but neither the builder nor the shoring company told us they were going to do this work and they did so without our permission (It is unbelievable--at least to us!) Since they began drilling the nails into the hillside right along our property line, and the nails are approximately 16 feet long, the nails breached our property line by about 15 feet (there is a foot of nail still sticking out of the earthen wall). We were able to stop them just as they were finishing the installation of the sixth nail, but apparently dozens more were planned to be drilled into our yard to hold up the wall. Of course, all work ceased, and has been stopped for one week now. The builder apparently had other methods to shore up this earthen wall, but utilizing our yard was the cheapest route. We are now in need of a geotech expert (something I am working on) to help us figure out what to do with these metal rods in our yard. Do they stay or do they go? We want them gone.

My (curious) question is; can grouted soil nails be removed without taking our yard out with them? Do the rods come out cleanly or does the grout come out with them? Will pulling them out (and the dirt with them) create a sink hole in our yard? One of the rods was drilled into our yard at only about a 25 degree angle and a 18" depth (I saw that one go in). I am wondering if we can ever trench for sprinkler repairs at that depth. We have lots of other questions regarding this, but we are mostly curious if grouted soil nails can even be removed without causing greater problems for us. We really want them removed in case we need to or have to excavate our yard some day. They are probably tying up about 20 feet of our yard.

In the meantime, I have some calls in for a referral for a geotech/soil engineer in my city to help us sort out this mess. I am, unfortunately, learning more about soil nails than I ever wanted to. It will probably take weeks to get answers, but in the meantime I am curious if grouted soil nails can even be removed. Thank you.

 

[GeoPaveTraffic]

It is very unlikely that the nails can be removed without causing signifiant damage to your yard. They are afterall designed to provide tensile reinforcement.

I would start by requiring them to remove them without damage to your yard, strictly as a negociating tactic. Then "accept" that they pay you some amount of money to leave them in place. Your justification for the money is that any excavations that you might want to do in the future would require you to deal with the nails.

 

[PEinc]

The soil nails should not be a problem in the future. They are passive reinforcing elements with little or no load locked into them. However, they are on your property without permission. You may want to let them continue installing the nails at a price. Charge them or get them to make some other offer of compensation, such as some landscaping or driveway repair if needed.

Also, if you let them continue, make sure their design was prepared and sealed by a licensed and insured engineer.

 

[PEinc]

Also, if your house is close to the excavation, get them to do a preconstruction survey of your house and then make them monitor your house during the excavation and soil nail wall installation. Doing this will allow you to determine if they have damaged your house or other property.

 

[snsl123]

I had suspected the same, so that is no surprise. I am not happy about that, though. I was hoping they might break free of the grout and pull right out. That is why I threw this question out there.

I think you are right regarding compensation. That is a reasonable request, since we might have to deal with these some day.

I received some referrals today for geotech engineers. We will consult with one to come out and evaluate our situation and to give us a figure of how much compensation is reasonable; given the length of the nails, number of nails, their depth, and how much of our front yard they are tying up, etc. Thank you for replying. That helps relieve my sense of curiosity about the fate of these things in our front yard.

 

[civilperson]

If the nails encroach your property in the set back required by zoning, your damages will be hard to demonstrate.

 

[snsl123]

That doesn't make sense to me. How can a private entity drill 15 foot nails into my yard, taking away my rights to excavate my own yard one day (without costing extra money and hassle to deal with the rods), and it not be considered damages? This isn't a city easement. It is the private property line between two houses? How can I trench for sprinklers, or water or gas lines for a swimming pool with 15 rods running through my yard? All without our permission. I think damages would be easy to demonstrate. Please explain what you mean.

 

[cvg]

I think damages are clearly evident. And if you remove / cut the rods to install your swimming pool will the retaining wall fail causing potentially even more damage? Are the nails and reinforcement adequate so your your swimming pool won't slide off the edge? Who knows - but this will require an engineering evaluation (that your neighbor should pay for). I think your neighbor was extremely reckless assuming that this would ever be acceptable to you. Your attorney can very easily assess your damages for you.

By the way, did your neighbor get a permit to do this? If so, it seems that the City was also quite reckless in issuing this permit.

 

[DRC1]

Your rights and recovery vary state to state, but in general are somewhat limited. In general, the adjoining owner is required to get an easement fromyou to support your property. If you do not grant him an easement, you may be required to support your property to allow the construction. I do not know what the consequesnes are if the builder does not get your permission. If the support is permenant, future construction may be a problem and your use of the proerty may be limited. If it is only temporary during construction, then the nails can be removed when they arre encountered. I do not think the nails will interfere with sprinklers. At 10 feet from the wall they will be at least 5 ft down. You should find out if the nails are temporary or permenant. If they are permenant, you may have to talk to an attorney and the adjoining property owner.

 

[PEinc]

Good luck with your neighbor in the future. This situation should start you off on the wrong foot!

I can't imagine how the encroachment of temporary (but left-in-place) soil nails will cause you damages. It's more a case of giving the contractor a temporary, underground easement for his convenience or economic benefit. Therefore, you are justified in asking for compensation.

Again, insist on monitoring and a preconstruction condition survey of your house and adjacent property. Also, check that the soil nail wall was designed by a licensed engineer with professional liability insurance.

 

[snsl123]

I think what the builder did provides a lot of interesting fodder for debate here. I can't understand how the builder could do this and think it would be ok. Maybe it is common place in the construction business to drill the rods just to get the job done and face the consequences later?? Maybe they just hoped we wouldn't mind?? It is one of the craziest things I have ever heard of. I think it is a risky game at best.

Yes, there is a permit and once the city inspector found out what was going on (he was the first person I called when I saw the drilling take place), he dropped everything at the office and rushed to the construction site and shut the entire construction site down. He was amazed that the builder went forward with the drilling without getting our approval. He told the builder that he must get our approval before starting, which the builder didn't do. Can the city fine the builder for something like this?? There were also several other options available to retain this earthen wall without drilling rods, but drilling the rods was the cheapest route (by far) for the builder, and so, that is what he chose to do. He just didn't tell us about it.

Yes, we have a real estate attorney. We retained him the day of the drilling. The cease and desist letter went out that day to the builder and everything is holding until we can get a geotech engineer to tell us what they did and if we can undo it. They've been told not to touch the rods (since they are in our yard) until we can work this out with a geotech consultation. I think the builder is now looking at "Plan B" to retain the earthen wall, as well. This whole situation is amazing to us. At some point we will get our geotech consultation done, then we will sit down with our attorney and hash out a plan. We have a ton of questions, just like the ones posted in this thread.

Is this a common occurrence in the construction industry?? Anyone out there have experience with this?? It is unbelievable to me, but I am biased, it is my yard.

 

[snsl123]

By the way, "Plan A" which was drilling the rods into our yard cost the neighbor $14,000. "Plan B" (I think it was driving I beams into their own property) which they chose not to do, would have cost $30,000. So, by utilizing our yard to drill the nails, the builder saved $16,000. That bit of information certainly made us happy!

 

[msquared48]

Some further thoughts here...

By their nature, soil nailing and tieback wall systems are going to require easements to be granted for any and all encroachments of the systems into properties other than that of the client installing these mechanisms. The presence of these systems could affect both the sellability and sales price of your real estate investment if they were installed without an easement, permit or special inspection. If an easement is ever granted by you to the other party, you should ask for compensation for that easement to include any effect to your property.

One of the usual and customary properties of soil nails is that in order to develop the proper design tensile capacity of the soil nail, the soil has to rotate, or settle, to a certain degree. This will locally affect the topography of the soil nailed portion, causing the ground to subside rotationally toward the 20 foot cut. This is normal to the soil nail process, but may be an unacceptable condition to you. If properly designed, it is stable.

Besides the geotech, I would engage a good real estate attorney...pronto. I would also poke around the city and see what I could find out regarding the neighbor's project.



Mike McCann
McCann Engineering

 

[PEinc]

The above comment is more applicable to permanent anchored walls, which I don't believe we are talking about. As for the other discussion about subsidence and rotation, I think this is highly theoretical at best. I would not worry about it. Temporary, left-in-place, soil nails should not affect your property or property value.

The important things here, as msquared48 said, are (1) if the wall was designed properly, (2) how close to the wall is your house, and (3) how much compensation they are willing to give you. If you get greedy, they will find another way to support the excavation and you will get nothing but an irate neighbor. Don't overplay your cards. Be reasonable and move on.

 

[bpattengale]

I know you stated that you had a real estate attorney and it was briefly mentioned before, but the installation of the soil nails on your property would require a perminant easement. An easement is "An interest in land created by grant or agreement that confers a right upon owners to some profit, benefit, dominion, or lawful use of or over the estate of another." Basically you still own the property over which the easement was granted, but the entity be it a person, coorporation, or property has rights to your property also. Commonly they're used for public utilites like storm drains and sanitary sewer that cross private property and grants access to the property by the owners of those utilities for maintenance and repair of the utilities.

As I understand it, this is a perminant retaining wall installation. If you you were to grant an easement for the soil nails to be installed on your property and if sometime in the future you wanted to install a swimming pool or some other structure that would disturb those soil nails the other property owner would have a say in it due to the easement.

There are damages to your property which can easily be proved. You could in theory make them remove the soil nails and restore your property at their costs. Second I'd dieny them an easement on your property make them put in the more costly retaining wall.

Make sure your attorney has experience with property disputes as they can get complicated.

 

[dgillette]

Two more cents worth:

If the difference in cost between the nails and building the retaining-wall system entirely on their own property is only $16k, I suspect they will want to do the latter, rather than fight about it. A lawyer can swallow up that much money in a week. The nails they have in place so far can be left until you build your swimming pool, and then you just torch them off in the excavation; I don't think they would be close enough to the surface to affect a sprinkler system. (Just insist through your lawyer that any retaining wall, temporary or permanent, is signed and sealed by a PE. The fair thing would be for them to at least cover your costs, and send you a bottle of Laphroig as a token of apology.)

This assumes that no existing structures have been affected. That's a whole different story.

 

[snsl123]

There is no easement in this case and we won't grant one. We are adamant that we don't want 15 foot soil nails tying up our yard.

From what I have learned, I think the rods were to hold up the dirt only. They must have planned on attaching something to these nails to hold up the dirt wall and then placing the cement wall in front this retaining system. I think that might make them "temporary, in-place nails." As I watched some of these nails being driven into our yard, they placed them at varying angles because they were hitting boulders and having to pull out and try again. There was no standard angle of placement with what they did, so it becomes a crap shoot to know where they're really located.

I worry about property values, too. My husband has mentioned that, too, but I just don't know about that. We'll have to ask the attorney. They drilled the rods under at least one 20-foot pine tree in our yard. I saw that rod go in and it went in at about a 25 degree angle and only 12-18 inches from the surface. I wonder if it might kill the tree (the rod and grout), since it was drilled into the root system. If the tree dies one day (of any cause, not just this) and it has to be removed, the rods will have to be addressed one way or another. They are there somewhere, but nobody really knows where!

Our sprinkler system is right along the property line, so the rods are only (literally) inches away. Again, we could have trenching issues. They drilled the rods into the area of our yard where the main water line comes into our property from the street. They are both literally on top of one another. The gas main is only about 15-20 feet away from one of the rods. So, both our main utilities are in this area of the rods.

We really like the new neighbors a lot, and yes PEinc, this is making the relationship strained (it's too bad), but we aren't willing to give up our rights to our entire side yard so they can have a walk out basement on their side yard. The entire hillside was removed so they could have this walkout basement. Nobody else has this configuration in the neighborhood (they are all custom-built homes by the same builder-our house is several years old) and the builder (and subcontractors) have told us this excavation project has been a very "challenging" situation. They have heaved this their difficult situation on us, in this case utilizing our yard for the nails, without our permission. The alternative retaining system is now going to cost $30,000 instead of $14,000(which was the cost for the soil nail system.)

Yesterday, the builder asked us if he could continue drilling again. We told him, "no" (again). The drill rig is still sitting there.

I appreciate all the comments here, because they help us formulate questions. In reading about these nails on the internet (from manufucturing web sites) apparently some are not rust-proofed and can degrade and cause some caving in and if placed improperly will impede drainage, etc. These are exactly the things we need to know about.

To answer other questions. . . there is a permit, the project was approved by a structural engineer, and there is liability insurance. Whether the structural engineer is competent, I don't know. I have someone investigating that now.

Now is the time for us to know the problems we could face down the road, in order to figure compensation. I have a call in to a geotech firm for a consultation appt. I have been waiting for a call back all day. Any other ideas??

 

[cvg]

you may also want to consider galvanic action between the rods and the water and gas lines. This can cause corrosion and then leaks. Plus, if a rod nicked the gas line that could also eventually cause a leak. I'm not a corrosion engineer, but it seems possible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galvanic_corrosion

http://metals.about.com/library/bldef-Galvanic-Action.htm?terms=galvanic+action

 

[snsl123]

That might be a stretch, cvg, but I like that stretch!! It is a very interesting thought and I will add it to my list of questions.

It is unknown where these nails are located in relationship to the water and gas pipes. Like I wrote, I watched them drill them in wherever they could get them to go in. They would hit a boulder, pull out and try another location, at all kinds of angles. They are all right there in the same area, but short of using some kind of detection device, we won't know unless we dig everything up. Is there some kind of device (like the utility companies use to stake out the water and gas lines before digging) that can detect the location and depth of these nails?? Could the geotech firm map it all out for us??

 

[snsl123]

What depths are water and gas pipes installed?