Retaining Wall: Eliminating Lateral Loads

Retaining Wall: Eliminating Lateral Loads

This slideshow depicts a project wherein a hospital needed to expand their parking lot into an existing sloped grade that lies in between an existing adjacent builiding. The masonry block wall foundation of the adjacent structure was sufficient to bear the load of the building but could not withstand the additional lateral forces that would be exterted on it by the use of traditional earthen fill. Many options were considered including drilling thousands of holes into the hollow block wall and fastening thousands of anchors and long metal MSE wall straps to tie back the layers and attempt to redistribute the loads to more competent layers. The engineering firm became aware of the potential utilization of InsulFoam GF Geofoam just prior to the project commencement. The contractor and the building owner both attended a presentation that discussed the concept of eliminating lateral loads on the adjacent structure by specifing InsulFoam GF as a lightweight soil replacement. The decision was made to go ahead with Geofoam and the contractor soon realized the benefits in terms of speed of installation and the elimnation of the secondary compaction requirements that are the norm with earthen fills. 4 truckloads of InsulFoam GF EPS19 replaced over 50 truckloads of gravel and eliminated the need for the MSE wall strapping. The project was then paved over and a new parking lot was put into service well within schedule.

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