Change Your Universe with Soil Cement
Existing site soils are not always ideal for supporting building loads. Instead of accommodating problem soils with expensive deep foundation piles, consider using soil-cement. Oftentimes an economical alternative, soil-cement is a method of subgrade improvement, which entails excavating unsuitable soils and replacing them with a mixture of on-site soil and cement.
St. Marys Cement Blend Silo
Gosling Czubak worked in partnership with St. Marys Cement, the design team and contractors to implement the use of soil-cement to support a 225' tall, 79' diameter blend silo at St. Marys Cement's Charlevoix plant.
After we provided a mix design and performed trial batches in our laboratory, on-site mixing, placing, and compaction of the soil-cement allowed subgrade soil bearing pressures to be increased from 3,000 psf to 8,000 psf. In fact, our testing during construction showed that even the lowest strength test results achieved more than twice the minimum strength specified. That's strong!
After its considerable success, soil-cement was also used beneath multiple other structures for a total of over 30,000 square feet at the plant, each requiring significant bearing capacity.
What are the Advantages?
- Speed of design and construction
- Frost-proof material
- Significant cost savings vs. deep foundation options
- Ease of construction at varying bearing levels
- Excellent working surface for form construction and rebar placement
- Reliability of strength and testing
What are the Applications?
- Industrial projects
- Commercial projects
- Education and Healthcare projects
- Residential projects
- Transportation projects
- Almost any project with inadequate soil properties
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