An unknown relative passes away and bequeaths upon you a small tract of land in Amherst. You decide to build a two-story storage facility to make the best of your bequest. But your self-storage dream is in jeopardy due to a 10 meter thick layer of soft clay (N<4) on the site. You put on your best geotechnical engineer hat, hire a driller to pull up some samples, and send them off to a lab for a consolidation test. The report indicates that the clay is a dark grey, slightly sweet, kaolinite blend with a cy = 1x10-7 mº/s, single-drained, and an ultimate settlement of 0.73 meters. It does not make financial sense to install deep foundations, so you are interested in how long it will take to consolidate the clay layer using a passive load. How long will it take for settlements of 25, 50, and 65 cm to occur?
If you need to build within the next 12 months and have at least 65cm of settlement to be viable, does it make sense to proceed?