Why I Like My Job: Strip Mall Wall Collapse

[RGD.]

SEE PICTURES HERE

It's been a few years since we have had a good ole fashion collapse of any kind. Not since the 4 story condo's blew out a wall - so it's always fun to get a decent collapse where nobody got hurt (except for the owners bank account - LOL).

First off - this is basically all we do. Structural foundation repairs, deep helical pile repairs, support, lifting and leveling of buildings, etc, commercial and residential.

So over the past weekend we get a call of a wall collapse on a two story, block and brick commercial strip mall. 12" CMU with 4" concrete slab on metal joist work, brick facade.

What you are seeing in the picture is a 12 foot tall by 18 foot hole failure caused by soil pressure on a sub-standard corner design. Why the slab did not collapse is just - well nobody knows. Currently that 4" slab is supporting 25 feet (height) of 8" CMU and brick - in addition to the roof load and live floor loads. Magic I guess - LOL.

So we have two days of shoring in so far. Little touchy as you don't really want to be standing under it if it decides to let loose. Tomorrow we expect to get the shoring up under the broken wall you see. Which means we have to excavate the debris you see - which will cause more collapse of the soils - hopefully without additional pressure on the right side of the hole - which has a six bow in it. Then we can get the final parallel shoring wall in place.

Once we get all the shoring in - then we can excavate the exterior for the wall replacement.

Some may ask why we are not using standard steel column shoring - this is a 14'-6" height - and our stuff does not reach that high, so good ole timber shoring it is. Another two days and we will have her wrapped up.

Anyway - fun stuff - LOL



Ron