Detached Single Family Home on a Sloping Lot

Saint Barthélémy municipality (Landes-France)

Date : February/March 2015

Dealer : Techno Pieux Landes

Engineers:
- Stéphane de Franssu (Techno Pieux)
- Guillaume Blestel (Techno Pieux)

Description of the Project

The Techno Pieux Landes team is accustomed to laying foundations for detached single family homes on lots with considerably steep slopes, but this project in Saint-Barthélémy, the last municipality in the Landes department just before the Basque Country, presented a substantial challenge.

Excellent collaboration with Habitat Performance, the company producing wooden structures for houses, allowed us to solve the problem of the extreme 30 % incline in this project. Thanks to its compact installation equipment, Techno Pieux Landes was also able to overcome the significant difficulties of accessing the lot throughout the duration of the job.

The Solution Proposed by Techno Metal Post

The installation of the Techno Pieux was done without needing to bulldoze and it was completed in spite of poor weather conditions that made the job even more difficult. A total of around twenty P3 and P4 galvanized steel Techno Pieux piers were installed at a depth of between 5 and 6 metres to support the 14m(46’) x 10m(33’) building. Despite all the difficulties we have mentioned, the job only took 5 days using 2 R2D installing machines.

The support plates were made specifically for the Techno Pieux heads in order to facilitate the work of BAT Pays Basque, the metal frameworks company in charge of the aboveground structure which is 6 meters high at the lowest point of the lot.

The carpenters were in charge of mounting the wooden structure of the floor and completing the wooden structure of the house over this metal framework. The house has an approximately one metre wide cantilevered balcony surrounding it.

The owner of the home explains that “from the start of the project we discarded the idea of using traditional foundations. The Techno Metal Post solution allowed us to dispense with the heavy work of bulldozing which would have been difficult and expensive taking into account the lot’s access road.”