Transportation of 'Vechthoeve' House, Netherlands

Structures Analyzed with Dlubal Software

Back to Customer Projects

Design values of the concrete foundation slab in RFEM (© Techniek en Methode B.V.)

Moving the house over water (© Techniek en Methode B.V.)

Steel foundation piles supporting the building (© Techniek en Methode B.V.)

Customer Project

07/24/2014

Netherlands RFEM Reinforced Concrete Structures Buildings

Structural Engineering	Techniek en Methode B.V. 's-Gravendeel, Netherlands www.tenm.nu
Construction	Contractor Bresser Grote Projecten 's-Gravendeel, Netherlands www.bresser.nu
Investor	Rijkswaterstaat Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment Netherlands www.rijkswaterstaat.nl

The following data refer to the model of the floor slab.

Length: ~ 72 ft | Width: ~ 43 ft | Height: ~ 3 ft | Weight: ~ 125 t
Number of Surfaces: 3 | Finite Elements: 7,522

At the end of 2013, the ‘Vechthoeve’ was transported over a distance of 1,640 ft. The wooden house, referred to as the Pippi Longstocking house, is situated close to Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands. The villa had to be relocated because of plans to widen the A1 highway.

In nearly three months, Bresser from ‘s-Gravendeel, Netherlands, completed the project of moving the house over both land and water to its final destination at the Hoogerlust estate.

UNESCO Heritage

The ‘Vechthoeve’ is a part of the ‘Defence Line of Amsterdam’ (UNESCO heritage). Due to its great cultural and historical value, it was decided by the Dutch Ministry of Public Works that the monument would be relocated to a new location and be given a new function.

Consequently, transporting the house over water was the only option, in which two dikes had to be passed. The relatively weak dikes were crossed by two temporary bridges and a set of sheet piles. In order to adequately support the building during the transportation phase, a completely new foundation was made.

Additionally, seventeen steel foundation piles were installed inside the building. The same amount of jacks were used to lift the complete structure 8.86 ft off the ground. Finally, a set of so-called SPMTs (Self Propelled Modular Transporters) were moved underneath the 11 13⁄16 in thick concrete foundation slab.

Concrete Foundation Slab Design

In RFEM 5, a set of three models were made:

Permanent situation
Transportation
Jacking up

The model consists of several concrete surfaces loaded by line loads (the jacks) and dead load. The jacks were modeled as flexible supports with different stiffnesses in each direction. The required reinforcement in the slab was designed with the use of the module RF‑CONCRETE Surfaces.