Conserving Energy at Your Place of Worship

If you've acquired land and are planning to develop it, you have to get environmental assessments to satisfy state regulations, but you also need a geological assessment to ensure your planned development would be safe and cost-efficient to build. Land might look nice and sturdy on the surface, but it can hide a host of problems that would make development difficult, if not impossible. Among these problems are a few that, while not deal-breakers, are ones that could affect construction itself.

Land Subsidence

Land that rests above an aquifer can sink if the aquifer is overpumped or drained. That subsidence can continue for quite a while after the water has stopped being pumped out. Continued, rapid subsidence can crack foundations and hardscaping, making your development unstable if the subsidence is severe. It is possible to build on slightly subsiding land (for example, the growing Phoenix metro area is subsiding, but construction still occurs), but you'd need to have your architectural engineers take the subsidence into account when designing the buildings.

Excessively Rocky Soil

It's possible the land you want to build on is very rocky, to the point where anyone trying to excavate it would have a very tough time. This is a simple issue to deal with, albeit not an easy one. But once you know how much rock you have to deal with, your planners can take that into account, and your construction crews can determine how best to deal with the rocks before the crew breaks ground.

Signs of Faults

Earthquake faults are not always huge, visible crevasses crossing swathes of land. Signs of hidden quake faults can be subtle, but geologists can scout out the land and see if there might be reasons to think a fault is nearby or even on your parcel of land itself.

Signs of Illegal Waste Dumping

Another concern is contaminated soil. That affects the landscaping you'd eventually have onsite and whether the occupants of the future buildings would need to be protected from the soil itself. If any illegal waste was dumped in the area years ago, it could be covered up by additional soil now -- but still contaminating everything around it. A geological engineering evaluation could find signs of contamination or find that certain areas of the land are fine while others are not.

Radon

Radon is something that shouldn't stop you from building, but it will require modifications to any building plans you've already made. Radon can collect in closed spaces -- such as modern office spaces -- so your buildings would have to be designed to vent radon out of any place people could gather. It's not unusual to find radon, but you need to know how much you're dealing with.

Engineering geologists can handle these evaluations and give you straightforward advice about how to proceed. It is better to know about these issues now than to try to ignore them. To learn more, contact a company like Geo Plus Partners.