The Cortez Plaza East, located in Bradenton, Florida, had begun to experience various sink holes throughout the shopping center. After the original property owner ran into financial difficulty, Manatee County performed spot repairs to the sink holes. Ultimately, a completely new system was required. The original 84-inch storm sewer system had performed beyond its designed service life, and the repairs were no longer reliable. Additionally, the failing system was no longer able to handle the surface runoff on the parking lots above ground which resulted in increased flooding to the area.
As a result, a fully excavated solution was needed to remove the existing storm sewer system and replace with a new system. Manatee County and the property owner, Green Commercial Real Estate Group, reached out to The Vertex Companies, Inc. to develop a new solution. The improvement plan included the replacement of the existing system with sections of open channel, two bridge crossings and a new, triple 72-inch diameter DuroMaxx® SRPE storm sewer system, manufactured by Contech Engineered Solutions. The DuroMaxx® system met both the structural design requirements as well a new service life of 100+ years.
The project was completed in three phases in order to minimize the disturbance to the retail shops of the plaza and their customers. While construction was underway, a change to the original system layout was required to fit within the tight site constraints. The triple-barrel run required a change in angle from the original plan with added concrete manholes to access the system. Fortunately, the smooth interior of DuroMaxx® SRPE provides a pipe that is hydraulically efficient, capable of Manning’s “n” values of 0.011 to 0.013, and allows for minimum slope designs and longer runs. As a result, the flow efficiency was still maintained.
Jason Priddy, project engineer at The Vertex Companies, Inc., commented, “We specified DuroMaxx pipe for a large infrastructure project in Florida. Installed triple 6’ diameter barrels to convey a drainage channel. The installation was straight forward, 20’ lengths reduced the number of units/effort, and the smooth internal surface helped with the flow efficiency. Contech also provided solid post-sales support when questions came up. We would recommend.”