< Back American Engineering Testing (St. Paul, MN) Saving limited valuable real estate space Year Completed: 2018 Previous Next

< Back Depot on Main Apartments (Zimmerman, MN) Underground stormwater system for 65-unit apartment Year Completed: 2019 Previous Next

< Back Paynesville Secondary School Unique stormwater management system installed at high school Year Completed: 2020 Previous Next < Back Project Name This is placeholder text. To connect this element to content from your collection, select the element and click Connect to Data. Heading 6 Project Gallery

< Back Previous Next < Back American Engineering Testing (St. Paul, MN) Saving limited valuable real estate space Year Completed: 2018 A 330-foot-long concrete walking path is more than a safe route through the parking lot adjacent to the Paynesville Area High School addition. Under the path is a unique stormwater management system designed with tire-derived aggregate (TDA). During construction of the parking lot, the existing path was dug down six feet, lined with a special fabric and filled with TDA. Approximately 46,000 tires were used to manufacture the TDA. Voss Plumbing and Heating installed the TDA in one day, using their heavy equipment to compact the material. Workers new to the material commented it was like driving on marshmallows, but there were no issues with the project. Water running off from the building and parking lot will collect in the TDA. From there, water will slowly infiltrate into the soil. Should there be a large storm, there is an overflow into an existing storm sewer system. The stormwater management plan was designed by Stantec. Jeremy Mathiasen, project manager, said TDA was the right choice for several reasons. “The biggest factor was space,” Mathiasen said. The alternative would have been to create a large open water feature, which would’ve reduced the parking area or green space. Being underground, we were able to maintain more parking area and keep the feature centrally located on the project. TDA helped us maintain green space and meet parking requirements." Cost savings are also a consideration; alternative water management plans would’ve been more expensive. TDA performs well. Mathiasen says there is a high void space with lots of room for water. The material is lightweight. It compacts well. It serves multiple purposes and meets multiple civil engineering needs. Maintenance is minimal. There is a clean out system that allows sediment to be flushed out if it builds up, but that isn’t expected to be an issue. National studies on TDA show environmental benefits, Mathiasen explained. “Testing points to tire shreds and the steel in the shreds help treat nutrients in the water,” he said. Monte Niemi, CEO of TDA Manufacturing, has been a champion of educating the construction and environmental industries on the benefits of using TDA. “TDA is an invisible workhorse in civil engineering applications,” Niemi said. “Across the country, it’s getting recognition for solving problems in the most cost-effective, environmentally friendly and technically sound ways.”

< Back Woodbury (MN) Maintenance Facility TDA helps city meet 2040 goals for public works expansions Year Completed: 2019 Previous Next < Back Project Name This is placeholder text. To connect this element to content from your collection, select the element and click Connect to Data. Heading 6 Project Gallery

< Back Previous Next < Back American Engineering Testing (St. Paul, MN) Saving limited valuable real estate space Year Completed: 2018 Civil engineers continue to find new ways to utilize tire shreds. One of the latest, rain gardens, is the storm water management system of choice next to a parking lot for a school district building in St. Louis Park, MN. Kevin Pheiffer, project designer for Anderson—Johnson Associates, Inc. in Minneapolis, says the void spaces in TDA (Tire Derived Aggregate) are ideal for providing underground holding areas for water runoff at a fraction of the cost for alternatives and, in the case of St. Louis Park, by using less space than traditional holding ponds. Rain gardens are detention and retention systems to slow down water that runs off of parking lots or other impervious areas. If water isn’t slowed down, it discharges into a storm system at high speed. When it comes out of a watershed, it can flood a river. Fast-moving water also carries a lot of sediment with it, according to Joe Otte, Wenck Associates. “Most of the contamination that gets into our bodies of water is sediment or things attached to sediment,” he said. “When you slow down water, you increase the resonance time and that allows anything suspended in the water a chance to get out.” Rain gardens can be more attractive than traditional holding ponds for a number of reasons. A rain garden: isn’t a water hazard, maintains vegetation, and can be made to work in tight quarters. For the St. Louis Park school, engineers were required to design a new storm water management plan because when they redid the parking lot and added sidewalks they increased the amount of impervious area. Nationwide, storm water management plans are often required for construction projects. “We looked at many alternatives and TDA ended up being the most cost effective one,” said Pheiffer. Ponds take more space. Plastic storm chambers may offer more storage in less area, but are much more expensive. Rocks would cost two to three times more than TDA, Pheiffer estimates. At the school, the rain garden was constructed in a previously turfed area covering about 1,300 square feet. Dirt was removed and two feet of TDA put in place. Six inches of decorative rock went on top of the tire shreds. Trees and vegetation were planted on top of that. Now, rain water runs off of the parking lot and sidewalks into the rain garden. Water moves out of the rain garden through a four-inch drain tile that leads to the city’s storm water system. “Everyone involved is happy. We fully endorse the Tire Derived Aggregate,” Pheiffer said. “We’re trying to find as many uses for it as we can right now.” Tire shreds for the project were part of a full-circle recycling program offered by First State Tire Recycling. A tire clean-up project in a nearby community provided the scrap tires. Everybody wins, says Monte Niemi, CEO, First State Tire Recycling. “People can see an immediate benefit to recycling when tires get picked up in the morning at a clean-up site, processed and then delivered to a school construction project later in the day,” Niemi said. “There’s a further benefit to supporting the use of rain gardens because they help protect our valuable water resources.”

< Back Central Community Rain Garden School districts choses TDA for storm water management system next to parking lot Year Completed: 2005 Previous Next

< Back Stearns Bank (Albany, MN) Parking lot water flow problem solved Year Completed: 2019 Previous Next < Back Project Name This is placeholder text. To connect this element to content from your collection, select the element and click Connect to Data. Heading 6 Project Gallery

< Back Previous Next < Back American Engineering Testing (St. Paul, MN) Saving limited valuable real estate space Year Completed: 2018 The Depot on Main, a 65-unit apartment complex in Zimmerman, MN, had very little real estate for an above-ground stormwater pond. Faced with very limited space and the the need to manage stormwater on site, Bolton & Menk designed a stormwater filtration basin using TDA instead of other more expensive aggregates. The system is designed to manage stormwater on the site, but does have an overflow into the city’s stormwater system if a rain event is too large. 84,000 tires were recycled into TDA (tire-derived aggregate) and utilized in the apartment complex’s stormwater management plan. This arrangement provides two benefits. First, the underground stormwater system was built cost effectively with the 50% void space that TDA provides. Second, the parking lot, layered over the stormwater systems, saves space and provides extra value.

< Back Central Community Rain Garden School districts choses TDA for storm water management system next to parking lot Year Completed: 2005 Previous Next < Back Project Name This is placeholder text. To connect this element to content from your collection, select the element and click Connect to Data. Heading 6 Project Gallery

< Back Previous Next < Back American Engineering Testing (St. Paul, MN) Saving limited valuable real estate space Year Completed: 2018 The City of Woodburyʼs Maintenance Facility project will accommodate the cityʼs 2040 goals for public works expansions by allowing the City to expand facility parking and properly manage stormwater runoff. The City of Woodbury chose to use a sustainable, next generation material, ASTM D6270: Tire derived aggregate (TDA). TDA is an aggregate manufactured from discarded tires. In the construction process over 210,000 recycled tires were used. This project entailed constructing 2 underground stormwater infiltration basins. TDA was selected to fill around those basins because of its 50% void space. TDA has the ability to store and infiltrate the stormwater runoff. Using pervious pavement over the stormwater basins filled with TDA allows a driving surface and parking lot on top of the stormwater system. "Our city is starting to age in certain areas and part of that redevelopment is going to trigger a different kind of stormwater management for those properties. And this is something we can say is an option that we would support.” -Teresa Keller, Woodbury Engineering Project Coordinator