PROJECT HIGHLIGHT: Chestnut Hill Development

Photo by MIKE BERTRAND/Siouxland Concrete Company

Photo by CURTIS SWOYER/Siouxland Concrete Company

The roads to the new Chestnut Hills housing development are paved with Standard Ready Mix concrete.

The 80-unit project has been growing out of the mostly untouched hills in Sioux City, Iowa. Developers say the homes will have great views of landscape and nature. 

But those sights also mean some tricky construction feats, including the higher-grade slipform paving used for the roadways to get up to the homes.

"One side of the grade elevation was at 8 percent, and the other side of the slab was at 11 percent," said Mike Bertrand, sales and service representative for Siouxland Concrete. "That means the whole time the paver was going up the grade, it was constantly twisting back and forth."

Despite the somewhat precarious situation, Bertrand said the 400+ cubic yards of concrete went down smoothly. 

"We had great truck utilization, and we were never out of specifications with the slump or air content."

Should all production continue on schedule, developers hope to have 12 homes done and available by the Fourth of July.