Cultec's Stormwater Management System Offers Benefits for Pennsylvania Development
Cost, Performance & Design Flexibility Among System Advantages
BROOKFIELD, CT/February 17, 2009 - The Floral Vale development in Lower Makefield, Penn. is a building complex designed primarily for doctors' offices and medical research facilities. Originally started in 1990, the project is now in its third phase of construction, and the engineers from Tri-State Engineering needed to design a stormwater management system that would retain runoff from the 5-acre development area.
Having considered several stormwater solutions, engineers selected a CULTEC underground system based on its quality, performance characteristics and cost-effectiveness. According to Jodi Litus at Tri-State Engineering, the Recharger® V8 met the storage requirements and featured the best vertical unit height for the project.
In addition to complying with state and regional stormwater management guidelines and local Township ordinances, the system needed to be configured to accommodate the site's varying permeability areas. One part of the site featured very high and another part very low infiltration rates, and CULTEC was able to configure the system to avoid the extreme permeability areas while still adequately collecting runoff from the site.
"CULTEC offers the widest selection of chamber sizes, which helps to fit the system into any footprint on-site in a cost-effective way," explained Jonathan Shell from East Coast Associates, a CULTEC sales representative.
More than 500 Recharger V8 chambers were installed in three beds and provided 53,650 cubic feet of storage. Two weeks before the installation took place, Tri-State Engineering needed to add extra volume to address a reduction in infiltration due to an increased factor of safety, as requested by the Lower Makefield Township Environmental Advisory Counsel. The technical staff at CULTEC modified the shop drawings, and East Coast Associates had the additional chambers shipped and helped reconfigure the footprint on-site.
"CULTEC has a great system, which is easy to work with both in terms of design and actual installation," said Litus. "We are also pleased that CULTEC was so accessible throughout the entire process and promptly accommodated even minor design changes."
The installation of CULTEC chambers took only a few days, and East Coast Associates was on-hand to help with the process. Production engineer Kelly Klipfel, who works with contractor Allan A. Myers, has never installed a CULTEC system before, but was pleased that it proved to be very easy to put together.
"We were very impressed at the ease of installation when working with CULTEC," said Klipfel. "The material is so light, one person can pick up and install a chamber."
Specified for the project, CULTEC Recharger V8 chambers have more than 40% greater storage capacity than CULTEC's next largest model and can be used for retention, detention, recharging, or controlling the flow of on-site stormwater run-off. The chamber incorporates all of the distinctive key benefits of CULTEC chambers, including built-in endwalls for strength throughout the system and a patented, overlapping rib connection. The Recharger V8 stormwater system uses the company's unique internal manifold design that adds flexibility to the system and decreases the required installation footprint. The internal manifold is achieved via two side portals located on each chamber, which allow manifolding to take place at any point within the system, eliminating the need to build external manifolds.
For more information about CULTEC and its products, visit www.cultec.com.
CULTEC, Inc., headquartered in Brookfield, Conn., is a national manufacturer of plastic chambers used in subsurface retention/detention stormwater management and septic applications. The company currently provides the largest selection of chamber types and sizes of any chamber manufacturer. It also designed its own manifold and water quality systems to complement its product line, which has an established history on the market dating back to 1986. Recharger® and Contactor® models meet HS-25 wheel load requirements and are included in HydroCAD, BOSS International's StormNET and Streamline Technologies' ICPR modeling software. CULTEC offers a complete stormwater management plan to help engineers and their clients meet Phase II regulations of the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Water Act. In addition, CULTEC products can contribute to the U.S. Green Building Council's credits, under the LEED rating system, when the project is designed per LEED requirements.
