Digging Begins

Since the last post, we’ve had a couple of sets of back to back days with no rain, which has really helped dry things out. The crews have ground up all of the stumps and have begun moving dirt. The work is starting with digging the pond. This will allow the opportunity to use the pond to deal with stormwater during the construction phase and will also provide fill dirt for building the roads up. You can see this already starting to happen with the roads being put in around the pond.

*This is the beginnings of a road, with lots on the left overlooking the pond on the right.*

Here in the lowcountry, most of the time your pond depth is determined by the water table. Geotechnical work was done prior to engineering design by drilling down in several areas on the property to determine the water table depth. Then, the engineers used this information to design the pond. That depth then drives the size of the pond needed to accommodate the volume required by the local ordinances. In Beaufort, new developments are required to maintain 1’ of freeboard (“extra space”) for a 100-year storm event, and you have to be able to hold it for a certain length of time before water leaves the site. That requires a lot of storage room! Instead of digging a big hole that only has a small amount of water in it most of the time in order to maintain volume for 100-year storms, we have designed a dry pond to accommodate the storage requirements. A dry pond is a lower area that temporarily fills up with water when the wet pond’s capacity is reached. The way we have designed it is to be a large park that is sodded, so that it can be used while it is dry. We have attached a picture of a similar concept at Alys Beach in Florida. Habersham’s will not be as urban as this one is, but you can see how a park can be made out of something that is also functional for stormwater.

*Dry Pond at Alys Beach in Florida that doubles as a sunken urban park with amphitheater stage.*

*Hard to see, but the beginnings of the dry pond sunken area, taken from the dike separating the wet pond from the dry pond.*

Looking ahead, the contractor will continue moving dirt around and there should be some materials starting to be delivered to the site in the next few weeks. In addition, the surveyors will be out in another week to start staking all of the lot corners. This may seem wasteful as almost all of them will be destroyed, but it is unfortunately required in order to record the plat. And the plat must be recorded to transfer property, which we will need to do for the model homes and multi-family to be able to start prior to the infrastructure being completed. More on all of that in a future post. But prior to the next post, you may see a bunch of stakes being put in the ground and that is what they will be doing.

Here are some more photos of the progress...

First Pipe in the Ground!

Wet, wet, wet….