The Job
This indoor pool abandonment project is located in West Virginia, at Concord University. A swimming pool built in the 1970’s was no longer in use, and had sat empty for years. As part of a renovation, the pool had to be filled in order to pour a slab and prepare the room for other uses.
The Challenge
Like many buildings in the mountains, the original site sloped. A retaining/basement wall passes through the building close to the deep end of the pool, whose sloped floor roughly follows the original grade of the site. The structural engineer had to concerns about backfilling the pool:
- increasing lateral loads on the adjacent basement wall if a heavy, granular material was used for the fill material
- causing settlement by filling the pool with material heavier than the water it was designed to hold, and which the underlying soils had seen for years
The original bid had two options: filling the pool entirely with 57 stone, or filling it entirely with 2lb/cuft EPS blocks.
The Solution
Geofoam blocks would have addressed both the axial and lateral load challenges. However, EPS would take a few weeks to import, cut, and place. 57 stone would have been least expensive, but increased lateral and axial loads beyond those of water.
CJGeo proposed a value engineered alternative to fill the bottom 70% of the pool with 25lb/cuft CJFill-Ultra Lightweight low density cellular fill (LDCF), topped with 57 stone, and then a new floor slab. The structural engineer, architect and owner all accepted the proposed change. The general contractor was excited to save weeks out of their schedule.
A single CJGeo dry batch cellular concrete crew performed the work over two days. The first lift, of 400 cubic yards took about two hours to place, and was roughly 6 feet deep. The second lift, around 350 cubic yards, also took about two hours to place. The day after CJGeo wrapped up, the general contractor was able to start placing the 57 stone on top of the CJFill-Ultra Lightweight fill.
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Facing a similar challenge to this indoor pool abandonment project? Give us a shout or shoot us a text. Click the state marker for the location of your project for contact info for the appropriate rep.
