Civil Solutions Associates (CSA) was approached with a unique wall design at the Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton, Ohio. A portion of South Main Street in Dayton had been reconstructed in front of the hospital. As a result, the existing stone wall was no longer viable and needed to be replaced. The design consisted of over 700 linear feet of wall up to 10 feet tall and included several unique design and engineering challenges.

The wall design required several step through stairways, incorporating an existing wall that was not to be demolished, facing an existing electrical vault, and working around a steam tunnel. The wall was also to be designed using Redi-Rock big block. CSA began the design process with the step through staircases and existing wall. These features required hard corners and defined our start/stop points. This can be an issue when designing with Redi-Rock big block since cutting the big block is not economical, while spacing these features can make or break a project. In addition to the issue of the layout, the transition from the new battered Redi-Rock wall to the existing vertical cast in place concrete wall had to be addressed. To make the transition clean and visually pleasing we used freestanding block turned perpendicular to the walls and standing slightly proud of the existing walls to create a pilaster look at the transition.

The next challenge was the existing electrical vault. The available space between the sidewalk and electrical vault was too small for the Standard Redi-Rock big blocks. Transitioning to a vertical block would have worked, but would have looked out of place. As a result, CSA worked with Redi-Rock to produce a 24” deep block at standard batter. These shorter blocks gave us just enough space to maintain the continuity of the design and still protect the electrical vault. The last hurdle of this project was the steam pit area that required a terraced wall and incorporated stairs and a walkway. The challenge was again layout, finding the best alignment that protected the stairs, walkway, and steam tunnel without having to cut and fit block. The end result was a wall that seamlessly incorporated all the unique challenges of the site into a beautiful segmental block wall.