Geobear had worked with the client previously to provide ground strengthening to enable the construction of a mezzanine floor to the site.
Subsequent to the successful project, the client contacted us to deal with voiding that had occurred beneath the ovens in the factory. A broken drain had led to a washout of the existing fill material which compromised the safety of the production facility.
The project scope was to fill the voids with material that would also strengthen the ground to withstand the loads of industrial ovens.
Customer Alternatives
There are few suitable void filling options available to a client, but none of the alternatives could realistically be implemented within the project window. As the site is continuously operational, the curing time of alternative fill and difficulty with access meant that traditional methods were not viable.
Why Geobear
As a live production facility, it was of paramount importance that the voiding could be filled with no effect on the operations. The Geobear solution could be implemented during small windows with no losses to the business, our fill material is also fast curing, with a site workable within 30 minutes, a clear benefit to the client. The Geobear method is also very clean, we operate dust-free drilling to prevent any contamination to a production site.
Geobear Solution
The Geobear ground improvement solution was used to treat an area 34m2 to a depth of 1.5m. We use one of our dense geopolymer materials to treat the area, this is pumped into the area via steel tubes through 12mm holes as a liquid, which subsequently expands to fill the voids and strengthen the ground.
As this was a food production facility, extra care was taken to prevent any contamination. We enforced clean air working throughout the site and used dust-free drilling machines to prepare the area for injection of geopolymer. Our geopolymer material has no negative impact on the environment and is safe to be used in food or drink production environments.
Our geopolymer material strengthened the ground to achieve the necessary load bearing capacity for the ovens of 6.1 kN/m2. We used drain protection on site to ensure no adverse impact was made to the existing drainage system.
We successfully completed the project in one day over a weekend resulting in no loss to the client of operational time.
