The Job
This Utah cellular concrete project by CJGeo is located in Provo. The tunnel is part of the Alpine Aqueduct Reach 1 project. This project realigns an 84" raw water pipeline away from a fault and landslide. This helps ensure long term stability of the line and its water supply to the rapidly growing Salt Lake City metro area.
Batching and placing the CJFill-HS cellular concrete.
The Challenge
The original design for this tunnel called for a high strength, sand-cement grout in the annulus. A few things made this challenging:
- Logistics - the access road to the tunnel portal was steep enough that trucks had to be pulled up with a loader, so deliveries would have been very slow
- Buoyancy - a 140+ lb/cuft grout would impose significant uplift on the new carrier pipe
- Speed - a high density grout could use the local ready mix supply chain, but would be constrained by site access
- Pressure - moving 140+ lb/cuft 1000 linear and 50 vertical feet takes a lot of pressure
The Solution
Mount Timpanogos
CJGeo worked with the project team to design a 45lb/cuft CJFill-HS annular space grouting program. Because the grout is about 60% air, it significantly reduced the number of trucks to pull up the mountain. The significantly reduced density allowed for lifts more than 3 x deeper than the original design.
CJGeo's dry mix batch plants can generate and pump more than 100CY/hour of 45lb/cuft material, which increases speed. And, because the grout is significantly lighter than traditional grout, it takes much less energy to move, which results in significantly reduced placement pressures.
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