By Eric Brister, Piers & Piles (a Zavza Seal company), Long Island, New York

Project: Kemeys Cove Condominiums · Westchester County, NY

Scope: Full reconstruction of seven elevated pedestrian walkway bridges

Engineer of record: Badaly Engineering PLLC ·

Contractor: Zavza Seal LLC

When a condominium community's walkway bridges age out all at once, the owner doesn't have a repair project they have a coordinated reconstruction on a property full of people who still need to get to their front doors every day. That was the challenge at Kemeys Cove, and it's exactly the kind of job where engineering and logistics have to be equally good.

The Challenge

Seven timber walkway bridges the primary access routes between buildings had reached the end of their service life. Two problems were stacked on top of each other:

• Structural: aged framing and corroded connections no longer offered dependable reserve capacity for foot traffic.
• Foundation: the original footings sat too shallow for a Northeast freeze climate, so seasonal frost heave was distorting decks and loosening connections.

And because these were occupied buildings, not one bridge could simply be closed and abandoned. Every structure had to come out and go back in while a safe, code-compliant path stayed open with adjacent building faces, utilities, and landscaping protected the whole time.

The Solution

Working from Badaly Engineering's stamped drawings, we rebuilt all seven bridges on a system engineered to outlast its own hardware.

Foundations built for the frost line. Each bridge now bears on cast-in-place concrete piers 18 diameter × 42 deep, reinforced with #4 rebar and poured with 4,000 psi concrete. That 42 embedment carries the bearing surface below frost depth, directly fixing the heave that undermined the old footings. A galvanized post base keeps the wood column up out of standing moisture.

A superstructure that resists the real enemy: corrosion. Pressure-treated 4×4 columns carry pressure-treated beams with engineered mechanical connectors, 2×12 pressure-treated joists at 16 on center, and pressure-treated decking finished with a textured, slip-resistant topcoat. Every connector, post base, lintel, and railing is galvanized because connection corrosion, not lumber failure, is what usually condemns a timber bridge.

Access that never stopped. We marked out utilities, fenced and signed every work zone for building-department compliance, and set silt fence per plan. An elevated metal temporary bridge kept residents moving over the work safer and sturdier than a site-built wood ramp, and it stayed out of the way of the permanent construction below. Then we worked bridge by bridge so no resident was ever left without a compliant path.

 

Beyond the Spec

Good contractors treat the engineer's drawings as the floor for quality, not the ceiling. Three upgrades each documented in writing to the owner went in beyond the base scope: the elevated metal temporary bridge, galvanized steel lintels at wall openings even where not explicitly called out (standard good practice, backed by the way OSHA and building codes treat public protection on occupied sites), and metal edging at the ceramic tile transitions to stop grout deterioration and tile cracking down the road.

The Result

Seven bridges, one occupied site, zero loss of resident access reconstructed on frost-depth foundations and a fully galvanized, pressure-treated structure engineered for the long haul. The base reconstruction (including galvanized railings) came in at approximately $195,506, with the elevated metal access bridge offered as an option.

This is what deep-foundation and structural reconstruction looks like when it's done to last. If your property has aging walkway bridges, settling footings, or foundations that need real engineering behind them, that's our work.

See our related services: helical & pier foundation systems · pile load testing · and the full range at ZavzaSeal.com.

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Categories

Soil Dynamics In-Situ

Keywords

Bridges, pedestrian bridge