Nashville Basement Abandonment

The Job

This Nashville basement abandonment project is located along Church Street, in downtown Nashville, Tennessee. A privately owned building was constructed inside of the basement of a previous building, but with a smaller footprint. Structural slabs spanning between 4′ and 20′ from the original basement walls to the new basement walls served as a parking lot and public sidewalk.

The Challenge

As the structural slabs over the unused basement deteriorated, there were concerns about stability. Uses included a public sidewalk and parking/driveway area. The wall isolating the occupied space of the new building and the unoccupied area of basement was constructed of hollow clay block, metal studs & drywall. The maximum lateral load of any backfill material could only be 50PSF.

The Solution

CJGeo successfully completed this Nashville basement abandonment with 775CY of 25lb/cuft CJFill-Ultra Lightweight cellular concrete. The placements was done in 2′ lifts to meet the maximum 50PSF liquid head limit on the containing wall.

To address the unreliability of ready mix availability, CJGeo used the dry batch generation process to make the CJFill-UL onsite. Dry batch generation blends dry bulk cement and water onsite using a custom batch plant, which also generates the preformed foam. The cement slurry and preformed foam pass through a static mixer to ensure a homogenous mixture.

Because the roof slab was close to 18″ thick, and had multiple cast in place beams, CJGeo worked with the customer to design a sacrificial vent pipe system. This minimized the number of holes to core through the slab, while ensuring continuous bearing of the vault roof on the cellular concrete fill material.

Prior to placement of the CJFill-UL, a shotcrete contractor coated the hollow clay block wall to make it grout tight.