Alchatek Blog

Last year in Florida alone, I gave over 30 lunch and learn presentations on the subject of polyurethane as a method of filling voids and stabilizing soil behind bulkheads and seawalls.  These presentations were done at various engineering firms from the panhandle down to Miami.  Besides serving as an opportunity to feature polyurethane in a specific application, it is also a forum to explore other applications that may arise.  I can’t tell you how many times I would be discussing permeation of soils behind a seawall and an engineer would ask, “Hey could that be used in this other situation that I am dealing with?”  At the very least it is an opportunity to plant seeds for projects down the road. 

A lunch and learn is a training and development event that is scheduled during a lunch hour in a work day. This is a great way to give a presentation to engineers, municipalities, or contractors on the latest advancements in polyurethane technology for geotechnical and infrastructure repair applications.

Our lunch and learn presentations are designed to facilitate conversations about the benefits of using polyurethane technology on geotechnical, structural, and civil projects. We aim to be your go to partner and that includes bridging the gap about what tools to use, how to use them, when to use them, and how to market yourself in your field.

We schedule lunch and learns every month at various engineering firms, contractor offices, and municipalities. These sessions are a great way to meet our technical experts in person, ask questions, and even demo a product. And who can turn down a good lunch? We take care of that as well. 

After most presentations we will have contractors or engineers who show interest in our products. Many times we will have engineering consultants approach our team and ask for a private demo to specify our products for future projects.

Benefits of Attending a Lunch and Learn

• Learn about the latest polyurethane technology and tools available.
• Ask first hand questions and receive immediate feedback.
• Networking opportunity and private demos available.
• Complimentary lunch may be provided.
• Sessions are usually kept under an hour

How Do I Get on the Schedule?

Contact us and we’ll have one of our regional managers reach out to set up an appointment.  Let us know the product line you are interested in, and any additional information about possible projects. We will formulate a presentation tailored to your needs. If a presentation on short notice is required, we can even have pizza delivered and give the presentation remotely via a screen sharing program.

Want information on the products we offer?

Part of managing a stormwater or sewer system involves vacuum, inspection and sealing. Municipalities that own these systems either do this work themselves or sub out a portion or all of the process. Here’s an overview of the process:

Assuming that the pipes have been vacuumed, your next step is to inspect them with a remote operated pipe crawler camera (as depicted in the bottom left side of the graphic below). You can use these types of cameras to thoroughly inspect the area.  In particular you’re looking for separated joints and cracks which exhibit water infiltration. The video is monitored from the street level. 

The images coming from the camera’s location in the pipe are compared with existing plans or blueprints for the sewer or stormwater system. When leaks are observed below, the point on the ground directly above is marked for insertion of a grout pipe. You continue this process until all the repair spots are marked on the  ground above.

After all the points are marked, your injection crew begins driving the grout pipe(s). Once the pipe(s) are in position, you inject AP Fill 700 or Spetec H100, while continuing to monitor via video. When the observed water infiltration is cut off, you stop the grouting process. Your choice of product, combined with your specific amount of catalyst or accelerator, depends on the exact conditions you are working with.

The end result is a sealed system where pipe joints and manhole structures are stabilized, sealed and protected from further infiltration. As always, you can rely on Alchemy-Spetec’s expert tech support for answers to any questions regarding this procedure.

Want more information on sealing leaks?

Even though we sell to contractors, we get a lot of calls from property owners or managers with slab issues after their internet searches lead them to our website. Part of my job consists of talking to them to determine if their situation merits forwarding to one of our contractors in their area. What follows are the most common questions I hear from property owners or managers interested in slab lifting, along with the most accurate answers. This is extremely valuable info for any polyurethane slab lifting contractor.

1. How strong is your slab lifting foam?

AP Lift Foam can support up to 14,000 lbs per sq ft. That's in a free rise foam. Underneath a slab it will be many times stronger than that.

2. Have these products been specified?

Yes. In the later 1990s various Departments of Transportation started testing high density foams underneath bridge approach slabs. These polymers have proven to hold up and are now used by just about every DOT In the United States to support highway loads.

3. How long will the installed foam last?

Polyurethanes are made from derivatives of oil and natural gas. Their lifespan is similar to that of plastics. They have high chemical resistivity and should last a hundred years.

4. What if you over lift?

The lifting is done in a very controlled manner, moving the slab millimeters at a time. A trained slab lifter is usually able to get within one eighth of an inch tolerance.

5. Can the foam lift a very thick slab or a slab with a piece of equipment on it?

Yes that is not a problem. If you run the math and apply PSI (pounds per square inch) over square feet you'll realize that it doesn't take very much pressure to lift something heavy.

6. Is the foam safe for the environment?

Our polyurethane foam does not shrink, degrade, or leach anything into the environment. We are one of only two companies that has an NSF certified (approved for contact with drinking water) structural lifting foam.

7. How is the foam used in a warehouse or industrial facility?

In industrial facilities or warehouses, polyurethane foam is used to stabilize rocking slabs, to lift sunken slabs, to fill voids beneath slabs both in and outside the building, and to fill massive voids that occur right behind loading dock walls.

Want more information on slab lifting? 

As I wrote in a previous blog post The Benefits of Buying Through Distribution:

1. A distributor can serve as a one-stop shop.
 
2. Local distributors serve as experts in their area. (They often have the scoop on new projects, change orders, supplemental materials, and emergency repair needs.)
 
3. Having a distributor on hand is extremely convenient. Nothing is worse than having to call the factory again to have more product shipped after a mis-calculated estimate.
 
4. Many distributors actively work to get products specified for local jobs. That in itself can be a huge benefit. The distributor in a sense can sometimes be an extended part of your sales force.

With those benefits in mind, we publish a semi-regular Distributor Profile Series to provide more information on Alchemy-Spetec's distribution network.

In this article, we feature Indcon Inc.

They are an industrial maintenance solution provider, supplying repair materials to the industrial maintenance and construction industries.

Established in 1998, Indcon was formed in Lexington, South Carolina by Tony and Jean Atkins as a small family-run operation. The company grew quickly through their combined efforts and soon outpaced their limited capabilities. As business opportunities grew, so did Indcon, spreading its footprint first across the Southeast and later into the rest of the country. Indcon quickly outgrew its original office and eventually established a warehouse operation in Columbia and moved the company headquarters to Greenville, South Carolina.

Today, Indcon’s reach is nationwide. With sales professionals and locations placed strategically throughout the country, they are able to assist customers throughout the country to quickly get exactly the expertise, products, and services they need to reach optimum performance.

Indcon offers next day delivery to most locations on the East Coast!

A few Alchemy-Spetec items you'll find at Indcon Inc:

It was about 2 AM when the fire alarm when off in my hotel room.  I have never heard an alarm so loud in my life; all I wanted to do was get out of the room but it was so disorienting that I could barely throw some pants and a shirt on.  My instincts told me this was a false alarm as I trudged down 5 flights of stairs to the bottom level.  I was behind an elderly couple so it was slow going as we navigated our way out.

This particular stairwell brought us out on the side of the building and I noticed it was dimly lit.  This was a nice ocean front resort hotel and the lighting in my opinion should have been brighter.  About the time I noticed that, the elderly lady in front of me tripped and fell right on her face on the sidewalk.  She was about 5 yards in front of me and I was first to her side; she had fallen behind her family.  Fortunately a quick responding fire department rolled up right then and I ran over to get their help.  They got her up and into the paramedic truck. 

It looked like the lady was going to be okay but the point is that this was probably avoidable.  When I ran to her side I could see the sidewalk tripping hazard that had caused her to fall.  Combined with the dim lighting it was a case of dual premises liability.  I give talks to groups like IFMA and BOMA just on the topic of Tripping Hazards and Premises Liability.  The numbers are staggering when you look at the amount of incidents and the costs associated with them.  The toll is financial: lawsuits, settlements, workers comp, bad press.  And the toll is physical: injury and sometimes death.  This is the cost of not knowing that you may have tripping hazards on your property; or worse it is the case of knowing and not doing anything about it.  Those factors weigh heavily in court.

Want more information on slab lifting?

Today I finally heard from a customer in the Naples Florida area.  I have been trying to reach these guys since hurricane Irma rolled through, so it was a relief to finally talk to them.  They are still 3 weeks away from getting power.  Thank goodness they have a slab lifting rig with a big generator to get some power and AC going.

All across the gulf coast and east coast, seawalls and other structures near the water have been put under immense stress.  Severe scouring, sinkholes, and seawall failures are being reported.  The damage is staggering.

One hurricane-related phenomenon that occurred on Florida's west coast was a suction that drained the water from harbors and bays.  You may have seeen the videos on YouTube.  Unfortunately, that sucking action pulled with it tons of sandy soil from behind seawalls and bulkheads.  In many cases the seawall toes have completely blown out.  The amount of property in danger due to further erosion and exposure to the sea is sobering.

There is help available.  Alchemy-Spetec and our network of certified contractors are experienced at stopping soil loss, fixing sinkholes, and stabilizing bulkheads and repairing seawalls.  In cases where the entire seawall was destroyed, soil stabilization may be the only line of defense against a growing loose soil zone threatening to consume the property your business or home is built on.

The product our contractors use to stop this soil loss is a permeation resin designed to penetrate loose soil zones, bind it all together, and stop further loss.  This product, AP Fill 700, has a controlled reaction time that gives the experts the control to make the material do what they want it to.  Whether it’s binding soil or filling voids and seawall breaches; it fits the bill.

AP Fill 700 is drinking water contact approved and phthalate free.  Don’t forget to inquire about that with your contractor.  Some competitor products contain phthalates and those are marine toxins.  Alchemy-Spetec has your back when it comes to the environment.

Protect your property, stop loss of soil and the formation of dangerous sinkholes, and trust our certified contractors that use Alchemy-Spetec soil stabilizing and seawall protecting polyurethanes. 

Call 404-618-0438 to get the help you need.

Want more information on polyurethane seawall repair?

In the movie "Heartbreak Ridge", Clint Eastwood says his Marines are taught to "Improvise, Adapt, and Overcome".  You gotta love the United States Marines and of course, Clint Eastwood.  So if they don't mind, we are going to borrow that phrase because that's what we had to do when we came up against a tough slab lifting job this past weekend.  

 

A site evaluation told us that this was going to be no ordinary slab lift.  In some areas there were voids over a foot deep beneath the slab!  From the outside, it was easy to see where the CMU (concrete masonry unit a.k.a. concrete block) wall was buckling outwards.   Slab lifting with polyurethane exerts lateral forces too so I was worried about pushing the wall out further (which in turn would cause a collapse of the garage slab, wall, and everything else attached). 

 

This might have been a job to walk away from, but I thought there might be a way to do it.  First we installed bracing on the exterior of the CMU block wall to offer some support against the lateral forces likely to be exerted.  Once that was completed we began injecting in a grid with AP Lift 430, starting at the lowest point and working our way out from there.  

 

 

I won't lie, this job was taking a lot of material because of the voids and the amount of lift required.  There was a lot of creaking and grinding going on as the slab was raising.  At one point we stopped and I decided to try something to give the wall more strength.  Inside the garage there was a cap block that ran along the top of the CMUs.  Drilling through the cap block, I was able to inject and fill the CMU wall cavities with the AP Lift 430, thereby tying those courses of block together with a polymer column. 

 

 

So next time you see a tough looking slab lift, ask yourself if you're going to just walk away or whether you're going to step up to the plate.  Make Clint proud!

Want more information on slab lifting?

People buy the MixMaster Pro because they want the most dependable, high production slab lifting gun on the market. Sometimes they can't wait for hands on training and we have to go ahead and ship a gun to a customer we haven't been able to train face to face. To help get you up to speed on the MixMaster Pro, we captured some footage at recent job where I'm using the MixMaster Pro and discussing best practices.

Want more informaton on the MixMaster Pro?

The Great Plains of Canada stretch from Manitoba, across Saskatchewan, and on into Alberta.  This predominantly agricultural region is the breadbasket of our neighbor to the North.  Small towns and villages are scattered across these thousands of square miles, serving as the small population bases for the farming communities.  These rural municipalities are faced with unique challenges when it comes to managing their water systems, roadways, and other infrastructure.  For example, if there is a road that needs a small amount of paving or some concrete that needs to be poured, there may only be one time per year when the mobile batch plants comes through town.  Combine this with some bitter cold, a very limited budget, and long distances to industrial centers, and you can see how it is hard on the small municipalities.  Small issues are major, and major issues can be catastrophic.

In central Saskatchewan we have a contractor, JACC Structures, that we have been working with going on our third year now.  The owner, Randy Serhan, purchased a slab lifting poly rig from our company and we helped him on his first big job, lifting all of the slabs in a cement plant that was being converted to a seed sorting facility. (Click here for the case study on that job.) Since that successful project, we have increased Randy and his crew's training to include crack injection, curtain wall grouting, and permeation grouting for soil stabilization.  With these skills he has found a lot of opportunities to stop leaks and stabilize soil for mines, agricultural facilities, and municipalities.  Many times a hero in his 22 years working as a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer, he is now seen in that same light as he saves small communities thousands of dollars saving roads and infrastructure that otherwise might fail. 

Take the small community of Star City, Saskatchewan as a recent example.  They had a corrugated metal culvert that passed under a gravel road for about 60 feet.  Most of the roads there are gravel and this was one of the major routes used by farm combines and tractors.  The last several years Saskatchewan has been plagued by high water tables, often making some farmland unusable.  The culvert in Star City was subject to a good amount of water flow and over time, the water actually washed out the soils around the inlet of the pipe.  This progressed until there were actual streams of water flowing beside and beneath the pipe, rather than through it.  This is not unusual and in a lot of cases it is undetected; the erosion of the soil eventually washing out to the point that the the overburden collapses.  In this case the road would have caved in unless it was treated. 

For anyone who has ever installed large culverts made of plastic or corrugated steel, you know that it is the back fill around the pipe that provides a lot of the strength.  Trying to pack soils or rock underneath the lower areas of a pipe is difficult at best and that's often an area of weakness.  In this case the soils washed out and something needed to be done.  Star City and JACC knew of each other through tradeshows like the SWA conference in Saskatoon.  The municipality reached out to Randy and asked him to come take a look at the problem.  "You betcha" was the standard Canadian reply when they asked if he had a solution. 

As I mentioned, these types of problems with erosion around culverts are not unusual.  The town was already looking at a $65,000 outlay to have the road and culvert dug up and replaced, in addition to the $25,000 cost of the culvert itself.  Not to mention the downtime and inconvenience of having to go miles out of the way to get past the road closure.  Working from the inlet of the pipe and on through it, JACC injected two rows of structural AP Lift 475 through the wall of the pipe, to provide a bedding for the pipe and to fill up the erosion voids created by the water flow.  One row was at approximately the 5 o'clock position in the pipe and the other row mirrored at the 7 o'clock position.  This work was all completed without any excavation or road closure.  The end result was a total success with the water flow cut off, the pipe bedding stabilized and strengthened, and the voids filled.  It was completed in less than a day and at a cost to the city below 5 figures.

Want more information on Alchemy-Spetec products?

There are contractors that lift the everyday slabs, performing a great service fixing trip hazards, reviving previously unusable floor space, and supporting the investment of the property owner.  Then there are slab and foundation lifting contractors who take it to the next level – every opportunity is a challenge to be conquered.  The results are often fantastic – people’s entire homes lifted back into place, factories and warehouses returned to life, and countless potential hazards and injuries avoided.

But first you’ve got to understand one thing; you can’t bring a knife to a gunfight.  Expert contractors have to know what is going on at all times.  In the picture at the top of this post, you can see a slab that I probably would have not attempted to repair.  However, with several tools to help monitor the different pieces of this puzzle, this contractor was able to put it back together again.  They say information is power and I am a firm believer in that, especially when it comes to taming jacked up concrete slabs.  In the picture you can see three different slabs.  Our customer Morgan Helms of Helms Polyfoam (Jackson, MS) is using a ZipLevel, a machinist’s dial indicator, and a putty knife to monitor what each of the slabs is doing.

The MixMaster gun is injecting underneath the slab that he wants to raise. 

So what are these different monitoring tools doing?  Let’s take a look….

1. The dial indicator tells him which slab is moving. In the picture, the base of the dial indicator is on the slab that Morgan is injecting under while the dial point is on the slab he doesn’t want to move. It doesn’t really matter how you configure it as long as you understand what the needle movement means.   A needle on a machinist dial indicator moves in .001” increments.  If the needle on this dial indicator is rising, that would mean the wrong slab is lifting and he knows to stop.  If the needle is falling then the slab he is injecting under is lifting, and that’s what he wants.
   
   
2. So what if both slabs are moving equally? In that case the dial indicator would remain stable or fluctuate slightly in both directions.  This is where a ZipLevel or a laser transit would come in handy.  Morgan has his ZipLevel indicator box (in yellow) on the slab he doesn’t want to move.  It will let him know if the slab he doesn’t want to move is lifting so he can stop and re-evaluate what to do next.
   
   
3. One of my favorite tools is the metal putty knife. Slabs often move in increments so small that you can’t detect them visually.  If you wedge a putty knife into a crack between two slabs, you will see it wiggle when there’s slight movement.  So the putty knife in the picture is on the third section of slab and letting Morgan Helms know what is going on with that piece.

You can use other things like string lines, tape measures, and laser transits as well.  The point is that real time information is likely to give you a better finished result, and it will also help you avoid making mistakes.

Want more information on slab lifting ?