Bridge Approach Grouting
The Job
This bridge approach grouting project is located near Lexington, Virginia. It is on Interstate 81, which has some of the highest truck traffic in Virginia. The Virginia Department of Transportation maintains this section of Interstate 81.
The Challenge
Settlement over time caused voids under three lanes of approach slab at an overpass structure. During precipitation events, the voids became saturated, and then act as diaphragm pumps. The high dynamic loads from the heavy truck traffic effectively pump the fines out of the saturated base materail.
Over time, this resulted in extensive deterioration of the adjacent asphalt pavement, along with distress of the concrete approach slabs.
The Solution
Working with the local bridge maintenance group and their on-call maintenance contractor, CJGeo proposed a polyurethane bridge approach grouting program to restore stability to the slabs. Previous repair attempts had used flowable fill to attempt to fill the voids below the pavement. This generally doesn’t work very well, and proved to not be suitable in this case, either.
Primarily constrained by maintenance of traffic concerns, CJGeo undersealed all three lanes of the approach over two nights. Grouting was done using CJGrout 40NHL, which is optimized for heavy loads, wet environments, and is capable of lifting settled pavements.
Because 40NHL cures to 95% within a few minutes, by the time the injection holes are patched, treated slabs and soils are ready for traffic as usual.
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Virginia Polyurethane Grouting
The Job
This Virginia polyurethane grouting project is located in Blacksburg, Virginia, at Virginia Tech. The work was done to support continued occupancy of the structure, after voids as deep as two feet were located below the floor slab.
The Challenge
A small area of the ground floor slab on grade settled, primarily adjacent to the basement, which is only under about 20% of the building footprint. The basement contains mechanical equipment, and ties to a large crawlspace used as a ventilation duct.
Upon initial discovery, the university’s on-call geotechnical and building envelope consultant performed exploratory drilling to determine the extent of voids. Several auger bores for exploration of the backfill material identified poor control during installation as the most probable cause of settlement.
The Solution
CJGeo was the most responsive bidder on the owner’s solicitation, which called for filling the voids below the floor with CJGrout 20SDB geotechnical polyurethane. 20SDB is specifically formulated for maximum expansion, high mobility, and very low exotherm.
One particular challenge was the amount of glass gravity drain piping below the floor. Because much of the building is lab space, when it was built, the most chemical-tolerant pipe available was glass. So, it was very important that the polyurethane grouting work not damage the relatively fragile pipes.
CJGeo timed its work around spring break to avoid any disruption to classes, research, and offices. The work took six days onsite, and a total of just under 10,000 pounds of CJGrout 20SDB.
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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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SOE Leak Grouting
The Job
This SOE leak grouting project is located in Alexandria, Virginia. It is part of the RiverRenew project, which is a large CSO tunnel and drop shaft project. This location is immediately adjacent to the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, and the Potomac River.
The Challenge
At a drop shaft location, the contract installed two parallel slurry walls between an existing combined sewer box culvert and a drop shaft to the new tunnel. During excavation of the pit, two high volume leaks, each around 125GPM opened up below the existing conduit.
The customer installed road plates to stabilize the area, and pumped flowable fill behind the road plates. This provided short term stability to the area, but did not address the high velocity flow of water through an unanticipated open graded sand seam that was causing the leaks.
The Solution
CJGeo mobilized a grouting crew capable of performing both high volume geotechnical polyurethane grouting and acrylic permeation grouting at the same time for this SOE leak grouting work. The first step was to install CJGrout 35NHV61 to fill voids which had washed out immediately behind the road plates.
After grouting the bulk voids and slowing the velocity of the leaks, CJGeo installed acrylic grout up to 20 feet behind the slurry wall face. The only way to reliably stop water flow through sands is to bind them together with a very low viscosity grout. The acrylic grout installed on this project has a viscosity less than 10 centipoise. This allows it to uniformly permeate the sands, react into a cooked egg white consistency, and make the treated sands impermeable.
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Facing a similar challenge to this SOE leak grouting 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.
Apartment Floor Lifting
The Job
This apartment floor lifting project is on a military facility in Washington, DC. During turnover of a unit, the property management company discovered signs of significant settlement affecting the interior floor. There was a significant crack showing through vinyl flooring, and up to 1.5 inch gaps below the baseboard in a carpeted room.
The Challenge
The primary challenge for the general contractor on this project was repairing the floor as quickly as possible. The unit was only going to be unoccupied for about two weeks between tenants. The contractor not only had to repaint, install all new floors, but also had to address this settlement.
The Solution
The general contractor reached out to CJGeo to assess the feasibility of raising the floor using polyurethane grouting. Having worked together in the past, the general contractor knew that CJGeo’s polyurethane grouting process is significantly faster than traditional mud jacking or concrete replacement.
A single CJGeo polyurethane grouting crew took less than a day to complete this apartment floor lifting repair. The total area grouted was around 750 square feet. Using CJGrout 28FDL, the grouting process corrected all of the settlement. Because polyurethane grouts are about 95% lighter than traditional grout and backfill materials, the likelihood of the grout material inducing future settlement is virtually eliminated.
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Facing a similar challenge to this apartment floor lifting 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.
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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Maryland Concrete Lifting
The Job
This Maryland concrete lifting project is located in Frederick, Maryland. The project is for the MARC system, on tracks also used by CSX.
The Challenge
MARC’s Brunswick Line includes a spur to Frederick, which utilizes a freight track that also serves multiple industrial sites, including quarries and concrete plants. As it winds through an industrial area towards the Frederick station, the line crosses multiple arterial roadways. As Frederick grows, traffic is increasing significantly with both cars and industrial truck traffic.
At two crossings, bellies have developed in the precast modular grade crossings. Water collects at the low spots, which then reduces bearing capacity of the base, causing deterioration of the adjacent asphalt pavement. This deterioration causes spalling of the panels, and ride quality problems for motorists.
The Solution
CJGeo’s rail grouting experience includes dozens of precast modular grade crossing stabilization projects. Working with the rail system’s on-call MOW contractor, a CJGeo polyurethane grouting crew grouted each of the two crossings in a day, each.
CJGeo uses CJGrout 48NHL, which is specifically formulated for high dynamic load applications. 48NHL provides multiple factors of safety from a compressive strength perspective, but is slightly elastomeric, which makes it much more durable than mudjacking or traditional cementitious pressure grouting grouts sometimes used to stabilize modular grade crossings on a temporary basis.
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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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Stormwater Sinkhole Repair
The Job
This stormwater sinkhole repair project is located at a data center near Dulles, Virginia. Within a few months of construction, a depression started over a utility intersection within a street intersection inside the fence. Time showed that asphalt patching wasn’t going to solve the problem, so a geotechnical engineering firm was brought into investigate the sinkhole.
The Challenge
The first step taken was video inspection of all the gravity utilities in the area. None of them were showing any signs of leaks of water or soil. Utilities within the zone of influence of the sinkhole include:
- stormwater (deepest & largest)
- fire protection
- two fiber duct banks
- three electrical duct banks
Given the shear number and crossing alignments of utilities, and lack of leaks, the presumption was that backfill consolidation over the underlying stormwater structure was the most likely cause of the settlement.
The Solution
Due to the presumed cause of inadequate compaction, the geotechnical engineer recommended polyurethane compaction grouting to the owner. Compaction grouting with polyurethane grout is significantly faster, less disruptive, and less likely to displace adjacent structures than cementitious compaction grouting.
CJGeo proposed using CJGrout 20SDB for this stormwater sinkhole repair project. 20SDB is well suited for filling bulk voids, and has very little expansive pressure, so minimizes the chances of fouling or damaging the adjacent critical utilities.
A CJGeo polyurethane grouting crew was able to complete the repairs over two days onsite.
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Facing a similar challenge to this stormwater sinkhole repair 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.
Maryland compaction grouting
The Job
This Maryland compaction grouting project is located on East West Highway, in Chevy Chase. A few years after finishing construction of a new mixed use building with underground parking, the public sidewalks began to settle.
The Challenge
A local consulting geotechnical engineer was the first call by the building owner. After reviewing the construction drawings, and visiting the site, the geotech recommended performing a few hand augers. The hand augers were to:
- confirm the sidewalk construction matched the plans
- check for bulk voids below the sidewalk
- confirm the backfill material
- see just how loose the backfill material was.
The hand augers confirmed that the sidewalk was indeed pavers over asphalt, over a thin concrete mud slab. There were sporadic voids below the mud slab, up to six inches deep. The backfill material was poorly controlled soil, and was relatively loose.
The Solution
Due to the backfill material being relatively loose, and the building being new enough that the soils hadn’t consolidated on their own, the geotechnical engineer recommended polyurethane compaction grouting to the owner. Compaction grouting with polyurethane grout is significantly faster, less disruptive, and less likely to displace adjacent structures than cementitious compaction grouting.
CJGeo proposed using CJGrout 20SDB for this Maryland compaction grouting project. 20SDB is well suited for filling bulk voids, and has very little expansive pressure, so minimizes the chances of fouling or damaging drainage board.
A CJGeo polyurethane grouting crew was able to complete the repairs over two days onsite.
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Facing a similar challenge to this Maryland compaction grouting 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.
