Indoor Pool Abandonment
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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WWTP Tunnel Curtain Grouting
The Job
This WWTP tunnel curtain grouting project is located in Syracuse, New York. It is located immediately adjacent to the southern shore of Onandaga Lake in an area that is historical infill.
The Challenge
A 700 foot long, 17 feet deep utility tunnel runs through the treatment plant site. Inside are numerous site utilities, including large diameter waste lines, along with many smaller diameter chemical and treatment lines.
Over time, the tunnel walls have developed leaks, accentuated by the highly variable fill material outside of the structure. When it rains, water enters the tunnel, which has roughly three feet of cover.
The Solution
As part of a large project at the plant, plans call for curtain grouting the length of the tunnel with polyurethane grout. Curtain grouting can be done two ways:
- through the structure walls, using holes drilled through the structure, or
- from the surface, using tubing inserted down along the exterior face of the wall
In this case, the interior walls of the tunnel were not uniformly accessible due to the number of utilities mounted on the wall. CJGeo designed a grouting program using the sacrificial tubes from the surface method. The advantage of this method in this case was that the density of utilities on the inside face of the structure didn’t affect the ability to uniformly introduce grout along the outside surface of the structure.
A CJGeo chemical grouting crew placed nearly 1300 gallons of single component polyurethane resin on this WWTP curtain grouting project. The work took about three weeks start to finish. The general contractor had removed the backfill and installed a new waterproofing membrane over the tunnel lid and extending down the walls about one foot on each side.
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Penstock Void Grouting
The Job
This penstock void grouting project is located near Hopkinton, New Hampshire. It is located at a small hydroelectric power plant that has been in service for more than 40 years.
The Challenge
This hydro-electric plant’s two original parallel penstocks are wooden. Sometime after original construction, 6.5′ ID steel liners were installed inside the original wooden penstocks.
Typically, when pipes are slip lined, the annular space between the ID of the original pipe and OD of the liner is grouted. However, in this case, the annulus was left open.
The steel pipes are nearing the end of their service life, and require rehabilitation. Plans called for installing a shotcrete liner. Specs called for a cementitious grout with 30 minute working time placement behind the steel pipes prior to spraying shotcrete.
The Solution
The marine contractor performing the shotcrete lining reached out to CJGeo about performing the annular space grouting with cementitious grout. CJGeo’s engineering & operations teams evaluated the project documents and site conditions and determined that there was a very high risk of grout escaping the annulus and making it to the adjacent waterway. This was due to the unknown condition of the original wood penstock, minimal cover over the pipes, and unknown, but potentially open graded backfill material.
CJGeo proposed an alternative, using CJGrout 22SHV geotechnical polyurethane grout to perform the penstock void grouting. CJGeo’s alternative material proposal was accompanied by load calculations from our geotechnical professional engineer confirming that despite strength significantly less than the specification requirement, that CJGrout 22SHV provided multiple factors of safety beyond the actual loads the annulus would see.
Upon approval by the owner’s consulting engineering team, CJGeo mobilized a confined space polyurethane grouting crew to the site. Over two days, the crew successfully grouted the annular space between the steel and wood penstocks. The following day, the contractor began installing reinforcement and prepping the steel pipe surface for shotcrete application.
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RCP Joint Sealing
The Job
This RCP joint sealing project is located near Charlottesville, Virginia. The polyurethane grouting work was subcontracted to CJGeo as part of an on call contract for stormwater structure and dam maintenance with a municipality.
The Challenge
Pavement distress of an asphalt roadway over a small dam prompted an inspection of the triple barrel 48 inch RCP structure passing through the dam. Upon inspection, significantly less water was flowing through the pipes than was flowing through the downstream spillway.
On each of the three pipes, water was flowing out of the endwall around the RCP inverts. There was relatively little cover on the pipes. This would make open cut replacement relatively simple. However, the roadway is the primary access to a neighborhood. Thus, a trenchless grouting repair to address the joint failures and piping was optimal.
The Solution
CJGeo worked with the on-call contractor, and owner’s dam engineering consultant to design a grouting program that not only addressed the piping and joint leaks, but also the voids in the fill material between the pipes and roadway.
Over the course of two days onsite, a CJGeo polyurethane grouting crew grouted each of the three pipes using CJGrout 35NHV61 geotechnical polyurethane. 35NHV61 is provides adequate bearing capacity for typical roadway loading, performs identically in flowing water and dry environments, and is certified for potable water contact.
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New Jersey permeation grouting
The Job
This New Jersey permeation grouting project is located in Elizabeth, New Jersey. It is at a large wastewater treatment plant owned by the JMEUC.
The Challenge
During installation of a new building on site, a large excavation was required. Primarily comprised of H piles and wood lagging, it crossed a 24 foot wide influent conduit. The influent conduit is a double barrel box structure, cast in place on 12 inch thick bed of open graded stone.
During test pitting to the bottom of footing elevation, the test pit appeared to be tidally influenced. The site is immediately adjacent to a creek that feeds into the Elizabeth River. At high tide, and due to the permeability of the stone layer, inflow into the test pit was not controllable, and was higher than the footing elevation.
Specific challenges here included:
- potentially high velocity water flows due to tidal influence
- 12 foot minimum spacing of grout holes due to structure wall locations
- potential fouling of bedding stone with fines
The Solution
The general contractor reached out to CJGeo about grouting the stone bed. The structure is 24 feet wide, but only has a single, eight inch wall down the middle.
CJGeo proposed that a coring contractor drill a two inch core down through the center and side walls from the surface. This gave us three access points to place grout from at each location.
Due to the large grout hole spacing, CJGeo selected acrylic grout. Acrylics are excellent for this type of application because they are exceptionally low viscosity (pump & flow pretty much like water).
A single CJGeo chemical grouting crew performed the acrylic grouting over two days onsite. Afterwards, infiltration into the excavation was down to a submersible garden hose pump. The use of acrylic grout ensured that:
- coverage was uniform despite the large distance between placement points
- any fines fouling the bedding stone were uniformly bound together, immobilized & made impermeable
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Outfall Leak Grouting
The Job
This outfall leak grouting project is located near Emporia, Virginia. The work is located at two different stormwater ponds at an industrial scale solar facility. The facility is owned by Dominion Energy.
The Challenge
This facility has a mix of both dry and wet ponds. At two wet ponds, leaks developed along the outfall pipes, which prevented them from holding water long term. During a precipitation event, water would build up, but then afterwards, slowly drain out by piping alongside the outfall pipes. In order to turn over the facility to the owner, the contractor needed to address the leaks to ensure the ponds functioned as designed.
The Solution
Due to the small diameter of the pipes, they weren’t accessible from the inside. CJGeo proposed grouting along the pipe alignments using single component expanding chemical grout. The pipes are reinforced concrete.
To facilitate this, CJGeo drove sacrificial injection tubes along both sides of each of the two pipes. No grout returned to the inside of the pipes, which confirms that the root cause of the problem was poor control of the backfill, as opposed to problems with the pipe joints. When bedding isn’t properly installed, and backfill properly compacted, water can flow outside of stormwater pipes, which is what was happening here.
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48 Inch RCP Joint Repair
The Job
This 48 inch RCP joint repair project is located in Raleigh, North Carolina. The pipe is located at a commercial facility. The slope covering the pipe experienced a slope failure. Upon inspection, six joints were showing signs of soil infiltration and water exfiltration.
The Challenge
The primary challenge for the general contractor on this project was minimizing cost and time. It would have been expensive and disruptive to excavate the pipe. Cover depths were up to 15 feet, and there was a road that would be impacted by excavation, as well.
The exfiltration from the leaking joints was washing away bedding material and adjacent backfill. This caused significant amounts of erosion, and destabilized the slope soils by completely saturating them.
Piping outside of reinforced concrete pipe is an ideal candidate for polyurethane grouting.
The Solution
CJGeo worked with the general contractor and owner’s civil engineering to design a grouting program to repair the pipe. The general concept for this 48 inch RCP joint repair project was to backgrout the pipe with rigid geotechnical polyurethane grout. CJGrout 35NHV61 was the grout of choice; it can be injected directly into flowing water, provides nearly 10ksf in compressive strength, and migrates into both large and small voids with ease.
A CJGeo polyurethane grouting crew took a single day to perform the repair. The average circumferential void around the pipe was nearly nine inches. Cutoff criteria were:
- grout hole to joint communication
- cross hole communication
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Box Culvert Void Filling
The Job
This box culvert void filling project is located near Fredericksburg, Virginia. The Virginia Department of Transportation owns and maintains the structure, which conveys a stream under a rural divided highway. As part of a rehabilitation project, extensive cracking in the structure (a double barrel six foot by six foot box), was being patched with repair mortar, and some cracks epoxied.
The Challenge
At the start of project, the general contractor discovered extensive voids outside of the structure. These voids were allowing significant amounts of the stream flow outside of the box culvert (piping). This was cause for concert regarding the specified repair mortar application and epoxy injection.
The general contractor reached out to CJGeo about filling the voids with grout prior to the patching and repair operation.
The Solution
CJGeo proposed grouting all the voids outside of the box culvert with CJGrout 35NHV61. 35NHV61 is a hydro-insensitive, structural polyurethane grout. Its NSF61 potable water certification makes it excellent for work on drainage structures.
The owner, Virginia’s Department of Transportation, required water testing before, during and after grouting. This water testing specifically looks for MDI. All of the water testing, which was performed by a third party environmental laboratory, found zero MDI in any of the water samples.
It took three days onsite to complete the grouting. Some hairline cracks that were still damp after the bulk box culvert void filling work. CJGeo grouted these cracks with a hydrophilic chemical grout to make them completely dry.
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8′ CMP Joint Grouting
The Job
A spec warehouse was planned for a vacant piece of land which had 1700LF of 8′ CMP running through it. The pipe was 10 years old. Because the site was vacant, there was no maintenance. Nearly every joint showed signs of soil infiltration, and there were massive sinkholes along the entire alignment. Given the depth, size, and short work window, the contractor sought out a CMP joint grouting repair alternative to replacement.
The Challenge
To avoid replacing the entire run of pipe, the joints had to be sealed. There were 80 pipe joints and 12 pipe to structure joints to seal. The pipe crossed under a roadway, and then crossed the site at an angle. The downstream end of the pipe transitioned to new 96″ RCP.
The Solution
In preparation for the repair, CJGeo had to educate the town, contractor, owner & consulting engineers that polyurethane grouting is an effective CMP repair method.
CJGeo mobilized a polyurethane grouting crew to the the site. Over the course of a week onsite, the crew performed all of the CMP joint grouting.
CJGeo used CJGrout 20SDB geotechnical polyurethane. 20SDB is a high mobility geotechnical polyurethane, so seeks out and fills even the smallest of voids outside of pipes. Because it’s highly mobile, it doesn’t deflect or damage the CMP that needs repair.
The manholes also had significant defects. Made of non-parged sewer brick, they leaked extensively. To address the widespread infiltration through the structures, CJGeo sprayed the interior of each structure with CJGrout 60FDC. 60FDC is a hybrid polyurethane/polyurea spray coating. For durability, the 60FDC was coated with polyurea. The 20SDB, 60SDB & polyurea coating were all installed using the same equipment, significantly reducing costs.
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Multiplate Tunnel Grouting
The Job
This multiplate tunnel grouting project is located in Asheville, North Carolina. During a real estate transaction, civil engineers walked a 1400LF run of 14′ diameter multiplate tunnel running underneath a strip center and multiple outparcels.
A previous inspection had indicated impending section loss of the pipe due to corrosion and had recommended grouting of incidental voids, but no work had been performed at that time.
The pipe, which had up to 20′ of cover, bypasses a large stream and runs under 200LF of building footprint, the main entrance roadway, two out-parcels, and ties into an NCDOT box culvert to discharge.
The Challenge
Significant debris was present in the pipe, and access was exceptionally difficult. Because dewatering was not practical, all work proposed had to be performed underflow.
The Solution
CJGeo proposed polyurethane backgrouting using plural component CJGrout material, specifically CJGrout 35NHV61.
CJGrout 35NHV61 is a hydro insensitive, moderate mobility grout. It’s designed for backgrouting in wet environments, and is certified for potable water contact.
Despite a bear wandering into the pipe during repairs, CJGeo crews successfully backgrouted the pipe to address piping and erosion outside of the structure over a period of two weeks. More than 40,000 pounds of CJGrout 35NHV61 were needed for this 14′ CMP repair project.
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