The Allied Beverage Warehouse is a wholesale beverage distribution center to 4100 licensed retailers across northwest Los Angeles, Ventura, and Santa Barbara Counties.
The Warehouse is a 110,000 square-foot, dock-high concrete tilt-up building. It has column loads of 110 kips, wall loads of 5 kips per lineal foot, and an average floor load of 500 psf. The site is underlain by stiff clays near the ground surface that transition to more compressible medium stiff to soft clays with increasing depth. Groundwater was found 4.5 feet below the ground surface. Estimated settlement of the structure was up to 6 inches but typical grading solutions to control settlement were not feasible because of the shallow groundwater. To control settlement in the slab areas, after the building pad was prepared, the building footprint was surcharged with 20,000 cubic yards of soil to induce settlement equal to that anticipated from future floor loads. After monitoring indicated the settlement was complete, the fill surcharge was removed. Subsequently, 195 rammed aggregate piers 2.5 feet in diameter and 12 feet deep were constructed below the building’s spread foundations to control structural settlement. The remainder of the 12-acre site was paved with concrete for anticipated heavy truck traffic.
Earth Systems provided geotechnical services and consultation from project inception to completion.