City: Laguna Niguel

State: CA

Owner: Niguel Summit Community Association

General Contractor: Schnabel Foundation Company

Project Description:

On March 19, 1998 the country watched on national news, as 500,000 cubic yards of earth, trees and homes in Laguna Niguel, CA slid down a hillside and damaged the apartment buildings below.  Nearly a year later on April 3, 1999, Schnabel Foundation Company began the repair to the hillside which would take eleven months to stabilize.  When completed, the hillside was re-vegetated and returned to open space.

Our tieback installation for this hillside wall required us to drill 363 cased holes up to 210 ft in length and install 600,000 ft of high strength strand tendon.  These tendons, anchored behind the slopes failure plane are tensioned against 700 cubic yards of cast-in-place concrete wales and 750 cubic yards of two-foot thick shotcrete anchor blocks to stabilize this slope.  In addition, Schnabel built a 60-foot deep temporary soil nail wall, and excavated 335,000 cubic yards of soil and rock.