CULTEC Lightweight Chambers Support Excess Ground Cover With Ease
BROOKFIELD, CT – Located in Tannersville, PA, The Camelback Lodge and Aquatopia Indoor Waterpark is a themed family fun resort settled at the base of Camelback Mountain. The eight-story, modern mountain resort features 453 spacious guest suites and the Northeast’s largest indoor waterpark – a whopping 125,000 square feet. The resort’s operations – including a luxury spa, tree-top adventure center, indoor water park, snow tubing park and conference space – makes it the most interactive resort in the United States.
Construction began on Camelback Lodge in 2014, with the goal of opening its doors in Spring 2015. The construction team knew that, with the sheer size of the resort, a hardy stormwater management solution would need to be developed. They also knew that, due to the resort’s location on the side a mountain, transportation and storage of construction equipment and a stormwater management system would pose a unique challenge. The stormwater management system was designed to sit underneath the resorts soon-to-be parking lot and would need to be capable of functioning in a high traffic environment. Lastly, and likely the most unique challenge of this installation, the stormwater management system would need to support an atypical amount of ground cover – to the tune of nearly 10 feet – grossly in excess of what a typical stormwater solution would be required to support. In a mountainous location, ground cover is necessary in order to manage, control and ultimately, slow stormwater runoff. Keeping the location and area requirements in mind, the design team decided that a plastic chamber system was the best solution. Plastic stormwater management chambers are easy to transport and maneuver, as well as durable underneath the weight of both traffic and cover. As the founder of plastic chamber technology, CULTEC was the first stormwater system considered. After choosing CULTEC, the design team worked with a CULTEC representative to identify the right plastic chamber designed to be both easy to install and durable enough to support such a large amount of ground cover.
“A typical stormwater management system might be asked to hold maybe a foot or two of cover on top of the actual chambers,” said Jon Shell, CULTEC sales representative. “Since this site required close to 10 feet of cover, the CULTEC system stood alone in the market in terms of capability of handling that amount, on top of the heavy-traffic expected in a parking lot.”
To satisfy all of the project’s challenges and requirements, the team selected CULTEC’s Recharger® V8HD and Recharger® 330XLHD chambers – models that would provide adequate storage; heavy-duty durability; stacked pallets for condensed transportation and stockpiling; and strong support under groundcover. CULTEC’s plastic stormwater chambers are easily transported to any location and would create no additional shipping issues en route to the mountainside job site. The Recharger V8HD and Recharger 330XLHD chambers are capable of holding large volumes of stormwater runoff and designed to withstand deep burial. Respectively, the Recharger V8HD may be buried with up to 8 feet over cover while the Recharger 330XLHD may be buried with up to 12 feet of cover. A total of 751 units (358 – Recharger V8HD units and 393 – Recharger 330XLHD units) were installed within a 45,906 square foot area. The V8HD model measures 32” high, 60” wide, has an installed length of 7.5 feet long and a bare chamber capacity of 8.7 cubic feet per linear foot. The 330XLHD model measures 30.5” high, 52” wide, has an installed length of 7 feet and has chamber storage of 7.459 cubic feet per linear foot.
“What really surprised us was how easy the installation went given the wide variety of challenges presented due to the resort’s location, in addition to the ground cover requirements,” said Steven Goffredo, General Superintendent at Muschlitz Excavating – the contractor team installing the system. “A different system, such as concrete or pipe, would have handled the ground cover issue, but been nearly impossible to move up the mountainside. It was clear that the CULTEC chambers were the best products to get the job done.”
The two stormwater chamber systems were implemented smoothly and without any problems thanks to proper site preparation and CULTEC’s lightweight construction. Both the contractor and engineer are confident the resort parking lot will withstand the test of time, even with excess ground cover, thanks to the advanced chamber technology developed by CULTEC. This was the contractor’s first time using CULTEC products – and they were so impressed with the various chambers that they have continued to use the CULTEC systems exclusively in multiple high-profile projects since the Camelback resort.
For more information about CULTEC and the company’s Stormwater chambers, please call (203) 775-4416 or visit www.cultec.com.
About CULTEC
CULTEC, Inc., manufacturer of the Contactor® and Recharger® plastic septic and stormwater chambers, is a family-owned and operated company with experience in the drainage industry dating back to the 1950’s. Introducing its Contactor and Recharger chambers to the industry in 1986, CULTEC helped begin a revolution toward using plastic construction products. Since then, several product developments and strategic alliances have made CULTEC a cutting-edge R&D-based manufacturer.
The company currently offers the largest variety of chamber sizes ranging from 8.5” – 48” high to fit almost any installation requirement. CULTEC’s products meet traffic wheel load criteria and are manufactured at facilities with strict quality control. To support the engineering community, CULTEC products are modeled in Bentley Systems’ PondPack® V8i, SewerGEMS® and CivilStorm®, HydroCAD®, Autodesk® Storm and Sanitary Analysis in AutoCAD® StormPACK Civil 3D® version and Streamline Technologies’ ICPR®. CULTEC can assist with any design by performing preliminary calculations and supplying job-specific AutoCAD® layouts free of charge. The Technical Department can also aid in system conversions and value-engineering of projects not specified with CULTEC. For more information, visit www.cultec.com.