Cell-Crete Corporation

Underground storage tanks containing jet propulsion fuel are being decommissioned. Regulation requires that the tanks be filled with an inert solid material.

Cellular concrete has been chosen as the backfill material on 3 recent sites—all of which have been completed below budget and ahead of schedule. This material is a wonderful slurry cement product with strength characteristics equivalent to other slurry backfills, such as CLSM, CDF, 2-sack slurry, slurry cement, etc.  These product names all refer to ready-mix products where sand is mixed with water and a small amount of cement to create a self–hardening slurry with strengths of around 40 psi.  This material provides all these same properties with the added benefits of a highly pumpable/flowable mixture. Due to high volume, the preformed foam that is added to the mixture trucking to the site is minimized. For every truckload of bulk cement we receive for the site, we can produce 120 CY of cellular concrete material compared to 11–12 trucks to achieve the same volume of traditional concrete slurry material.

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One foot of infill material was required to raise the elevations to provide green space in the dog park for a mixed-use development from the structure to finish elevations. Conventional flowable fill or import would cause too much load on the structure, so a lightweight material was chosen.

Class II cellular concrete was used on this project due to its ease of placement, low density and excellent bearing capacity.

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Earth pressure from conventional soil backfill would result in a costly wall design and construction for this large 30’ retaining structure.

Class II 30 PCF (pounds per cubic foot) cellular concrete material was chosen on this project to greatly reduce the static and dynamic earth pressures behind a 30’ non-yielding wall. The material is being cast in 2’ lifts, and over 5,000 CY of material will be placed.

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Precast panels and lightweight cellular concrete (LCC) make a well-suited solution for sites where significant settlement is expected. Such sites may require foundation improvement—a costly but effective solution. A less-costly solution is to reduce the load applied to the foundation soil by using a lightweight aggregate or low-density cellular concrete (LDCC).

Reinforced earth was selected to provide the panels for the project, and Cell-Crete backfilled behind the panels providing the solution for the shoulder-widening proposed construction on compressible soils without needing large equipment for foundation improvement.

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A 3′ void between soldier pile/wood lagging and the structural basement walls was originally designed to include 40′ of compacted pea gravel.

Value engineering was performed, and permeable lightweight cellular concrete (PLCC) became the preferred engineered fill option, due to its ease of placement and the narrow access for other traditional backfill options.

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A company campus is being developed on Elliott Bay and old lab buildings are being renovated. New structures are also being built as part of this project, including a parking structure and a berm for recreational green space which added too much overburden pressure to the soils and utilities in the area.

The site grade in the vicinity of the berm north of the P-1 Garage will be raised above existing grades as much as 8′. Lightweight fill was used to increase site grades without significantly increasing the overburden pressure on the existing soil and underground utilities. This would limit the settlement of underlying compressible silt and clay. An over-excavation of below-grade soil of 7′ took place since a 4′ thick layer of landscaping topsoil was planned at this berm. With the over excavation and placement of the cellular concrete, a zero-net in total weight was achieved.

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Tight urban areas are making it more difficult to access and resulting in issues with site work and earthwork. In this case, cast-in-place concrete walls were poured around the perimeter of the site and left a near 1:1 excavation which needed to be filled and compacted. Additionally, a high water table meant some concerns over hydraulic pressure needed to be mediated.

Lightweight cellular concrete (LCC) was quickly installed around the site’s perimeter without needing compacting equipment. The water table concerns were mitigated using a pervious mixture of LCC, allowing water to permeate through the material and not causing an uplift to the overall structure of the cellular concrete.

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The existing wharf structure for the National City Marine Terminal (NCMT) required load-reduction fill material due to the increased load applied by pile cap connections on the wharf deck in order to comply with the seismic reinforcement retrofit.

Geofoam was chosen for this project since it’s the lightest fill material available and also provides excellent bearing capacity.

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Lightweight Insulating Concrete (LWIC) and cement board came from a need in the Hot Rubber Asphalt (HRA) Waterproofing industry to provide a slope in structural concrete deck applications. They would typically place the HRA over a flat concrete deck, but in today’s market, this type of application has been modified to require the decks to be a positive slope and ensure proper drainage.

It costs time and money to form up structural decks for an adequate slope. This lead to the marriage of the HRA and LWIC. The LWIC could provide the slope required, and give the much needed R-Value to the project.

Initially, there was a problem because the LWIC couldn’t take the high heat from the HRA application. Typical HRA applications require a minimum of 2500 psi structural concrete. This problem was solved by adding a layer of ¼” cement board to the top of the LWIC as a heat shield, which allowed the HRA to be installed without delaminating from the LWIC (caused by the high-flash heat of the HRA).

Cell-Crete has been installing LWIC and cement board since 2013. Our biggest project of the garden roof areas at Stanford’s New Hospital and the adjoining parking structure garden area has been completed. We worked under two separate roof contractors: Letner and Courtney Waterproofing, and the Clark/McCarthy joint venture was the general contractor for the job.

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90-year-old brick-lined sewers in Los Angeles are failing. The city is making a big effort to reline existing sewer lines since most of these lines are almost completely deteriorated at the crown.

New semi-elliptical lining is being installed and grouted in place with cellular concrete. One of the benefits of grouting a live sewer line is the ability to control the flow in the pipeline and keep the pipe from becoming buoyant during grouting.

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