Alchemy-Spetec HQ in Tucker, GA

THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED

$745 Registration Fee
$665 for each additional participant from
the same company.

Get ready for a thorough education in Slab Lifting, Soil Stabilization, the Alchemy-Spetec Deep Lift® process, equipment, and applications. You’ll get hands-on training from a technical staff with decades of on-the-job experience.

Tuesday, October 4th

• Geotech Product Line Overview
• Geotech Applications & Case Studies
• MixMaster Pro Slab Lifting Gun
• Slab Lift Rig Demonstration

Wednesday, October 5th

• Pump Demos & Training
• PolyShark® / Soil Stabilization
• Deep Lift® 
• Ground Penetrating Radar

Thursday, March 31st

• PolyBadger® Mobile Slab Lifting System
• Estimating Material for Jobs

THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED

The residents of a house in Columbia, Missouri noticed the floor in their finished basement was settling. The slab was beginning to sink along the base of a load-bearing wall. It turned out that there was no structural support beneath that area of the floor. They reached out to Absolute Foundation Repair, a local geotechnical contractor. Alchemy-Spetec Geotech Services Technician Jacob Bryant was invited by the contractor to consult on the job as well.

Powerful Polymers

AP Lift 430 is a two-component, high-strength, high-density, hydro-insensitive structural polyurethane foam. This very reliable and consistent material was selected because it is ideal for strengthening and compacting soil. This high-strength closed cell polyurethane bonds with soil and concrete. After installation, the site is often traffic ready in as soon as 15 minutes. AP Lift 430 is also certified to NSF/ANSI/CAN 61 (approved for contact with drinking water).

Painless Procedures

The Alchemy-Spetec technical consultant worked closely with the geotech contractor to develop the injection plan. The crew removed the carpet and then drilled holes every three feet along the length of the affected area. Next, they drove injection tubing through each drill hole, four feet deep into the soil beneath the slab. A technician then injected about 20-40 lbs of AP Lift 430 per tube. The crew monitored for lift during this process. The slab was raised about 1/8 - 1/4 of an inch to ensure that the soil was fully compacted. Next, they injected additional material just beneath the slab (a.k.a. shallow injections) to fill any remaining voids. Finally, they removed the tubes and cleaned up the site.

Rapid Results

After only a few hours, the job was completed, and the site was completely cleaned up. The customer was able to conduct her previously scheduled dance class on that same floor later that day.

Want more information on geotech products?

This article is an excerpt from Episode 14 of Alchemy-Spetec's podcast The Injection Connection, featuring veteran coatings expert Murray Heywood. (If you'd rather view or listen, an audio/visual version of this excerpt is posted at the bottom of the article.)

Charlie Lerman: I’ve been on the services side for close to 18 years now. So I’m a big proponent of training and providing service. I'd like to acknowledge one of the other manufacturers out there that provides great training. Sherwin-Williams seems like a champion of education. They've got a great technical service group. I wanted to get your opinion on the value of bringing contractors to the trough, to drink, to understand, to learn...things like that.

Murray Heywood: Yeah.

Charlie: I don't even know if that was a question, more of a statement.

Murray: Well, that was one of the things that was unique to our group at Sherwin-Williams. Kevin Morris and I saw Sherwin-Williams as a sales organization. They manufacture paint to sell it. They aren't necessarily a technical organization. But I always believed that the more educated the sales reps are, the more they're going to be able to sell. Because if you don't know as much about something as the person you're trying to sell it to, you're going to have very limited results. But if you can at least talk the talk and walk the walk, and understand what you're talking about, then you're going to be more successful. And you're going to be able to help your customers, which builds a sense of loyalty.

If you solve a problem for somebody, they don't readily forget you. That's how I built my whole career as a rep: help people out, solve problems for them, and they will always come back for more...always. It's very rare that you save somebody some money and get them out of a jam and they say, "Well, I’m going to lose his number." That's not the way it works. So I think that Kevin and I decided early on to always ask ourselves, "How can we make it better? How can we make our people smarter and more equipped to sell?" And it's a whole package because you're selling coatings but we know the number one enemy of coatings is water. They sort of go hand in hand.

So I think that, while running these training sessions for contractors was great and everything, I saw that educating our own people is almost more important. That way our people can go out and help these guys. The training sessions we did were very successful. This has been a pet peeve of mine with every sales organization I’ve worked with in the paint world - you can't just find another one. It's not like selling shoes or widgets. There's a technical aspect to coating sales, especially on the industrial side. And the more you educate your salespeople, the better they're going to be. You're also reducing your own risk at the same time by doing things right.

We just talked about the cause of failure being ignorance and indifference. Indifference to quality, ignorance of quality. My old man, for example, thought he did good work. He just thought everybody else was too fussy. His attitude was, "Oh, it'll be fine." And I was a young guy who was saying, "No, I don't think that's right, Dad. I think that's a horrible plan." My dad never used his blinkers while driving and it used to infuriate me. I’d say, "Dad, you've got to use your blinkers, man." He'd reply, "Listen to me, smart guy, I’ve been driving for years and I’ve never had an accident." And I would think, "Yeah, well, you've left a trail of destruction behind you. You just don't know what you don't know."

And that's kind of like contractors who think they're doing well, but they don't realize that what they're missing is creating a whole backlog of problems. So all this training needs to happen with coating manufacturers. I mean, what could you possibly lose by being smarter about your products? Why not? As  sales organizations, and I can speak candidly about this now because I don't work for them anymore, we spent so much time on sending people to this or that random training or some feel-good training. All that kind of stuff that doesn't move the needle at all. It's just so somebody can check off a box and say, "Yep, we accomplished that."

It was always more difficult when we tried to push them through real technical training because you don't do it in one afternoon. We used to run our boot camps if you remember, and they were intense weeks of training. We were getting things in people's hands, getting a grout gun in their hands, and hooking that nozzle up to the zerk and pumping it. That kind of stuff. Hands-on. That's how I learn. I learn by doing, and so I think the more that you can convince these coating manufacturers to accept this kind of training and to invest in it, the better. Because if you think about it, we know that we haven't even scratched the surface of the biggest opportunities in waterproofing and grouting. We're usually dealing with the obvious things. But there's the stuff that's not obvious that it also can fix - and that is the biggest opportunity.

View the video version of this excerpt...

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Settling Garage Floor Slab – Causes

As with most slab settling issues, voids and poor soil compaction are at the root of the problem. This is certainly the case with sunken garage slabs. They are typically constructed by backfilling the area after the foundation is poured (or blocked) and pouring the concrete on top. Achieving proper and adequate compaction is often difficult and just not achieved in many cases. This, combined with time and freeze/thaw cycles creates voids under the garage slab. Concrete itself is heavy and can settle, but when we park vehicles on top of a garage slab that has voids under it? It is obviously a recipe for disaster!

Settling Garage Floor Slab – Solution

Alchemy-Spetec can refer you to a contractor for a thorough site evaluation. A qualified contractor takes the time to properly inspect the issue, which generally entails probing the slab to determine if there is indeed a void and/or unstable soil (and to what extent). Gathering this type of information is key to designing a proper repair plan and calculating the amount of polyurethane lifting material needed.

Depending on the conditions found during site evaluation, there are a couple of different techniques the contactor may use (and oftentimes both). If the soil under the garage slab is soft and unstable to a certain depth, they may opt for the Deep Lift® method. The expanding structural foam creates a squeeze effect in the loose soil, essentially forming added support footings under the slab. The other injection method, Slab Lifting, entails going through ⅜-inch holes drilled directly through the slab. The same structural foam described above is used. The expanding foam travels the path of least resistance, therefore, filling all void areas as well as compacting any loose soil. Once the soil is compact, the expansion of the foam creates the power to lift the slab. Our high-density polyurethane cures to 90% in fifteen minutes – which translates to the slab being traffic-ready by the time we are packing up our equipment.

Want more info on the Deep Lift® and Slab Lift methods?

This article is an excerpt from Episode 14 of Alchemy-Spetec's podcast The Injection Connection, featuring veteran coatings expert Murray Heywood. (If you'd rather view or listen, an audio/visual version of this excerpt is posted at the bottom of the article.)

Charlie Lerman: One of the things I say and again - and I’ll bounce this off you since you're from the coating side - I always contrast our grouts to coatings because with coatings, you can see them, you can touch them, you can do all kinds of tests. And I also always say it behooves us to train our contractors well and support them to get the products installed correctly because it's not like a coating. When you're a coating manufacturer, if there's a problem with your coating, you come out there, you do a pull test, you do a spark test, you can check the millage of it, you can say the surface prep was wrong and you could say, "You know what, you didn't follow the right installation procedures." With grouting, I’d come out and say the same thing that the contractor didn't follow the correct procedures, but what are we going to do? Cut the wall out? Dig up the whole thing in downtown and show? We can't prove any of that. It's very important. Grouting gets a black eye when it's not installed right because we can't test all those things. And I think that's one of the reasons that grouting has always stayed kind of small is because there are no really great, quantifiable, repeatable engineering tests that work everywhere to test grouting.

Murray Heywood: No, it really comes down to, did the water stop, right?

Charlie: Yes.

Murray: And if the water doesn't stop, that doesn't necessarily mean that there was something wrong with the grout. It's often that the problem was bigger than you thought because you can't see it. You're doing educated guesses. As a grout geek you know, "Well, I’ve seen this before. I know that we're going to have to put a port here and we're going to chase it around here." You can make some educated guesses but you're right. I can go in with the coating and with my gauges and test the DFT and quickly say, "Well, your spec said you're supposed to have 40 mils on here. You've got 20. So you're half of what you should be. Shame on you." Or I can pull the coating off and say, "Well, you have no surface profile, you didn't prepare it." And I’m sure the skeptics are thinking, "Oh, yeah, well, you're just saying that to cover your own butt." It’s virtually unprovable other than, when the water didn't stop it's obviously not working. And they say, "Well, your grout’s no good." I do a lot of failure analysis and failure investigations. That's the majority of what I do now is failure analysis. And I like that, it's kind of like CSI Paint. And I enjoy that. But still to this day, 100 years into this coating thing, the biggest cause of failure is poor application, poor surface preparation, and poor environmental conditions during the application. It always relates, 98% of the time, back to something that didn't go right with the application. And that can be the same with grouting. If you don't know how the water's flowing or if you can't make some educated guesses on how the water's getting in, you don't know where to start. And sometimes, as you know, you could be pumping grout in one side and it's coming out the other side and not doing anything.

Charlie: It always goes somewhere. It's about how we get it to go where we want it to through a foot of concrete. How do we control a liquid? That's what it comes down to.

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In the city limits of Atlanta, a couple was surprised to see a sinkhole forming in their home’s front yard. They became quite alarmed as within just a few weeks it swallowed their sidewalk and a decent portion of the property in front of the home. They notified the city. 

After the City of Atlanta quickly got involved, some investigation revealed an old brick storm sewer running approximately 25-30 feet under the front of the property. Across the country, there is lots of brick infrastructure that’s still in service and in some cases over 100 years old. These outdated structures suffer from infiltration of groundwater which often erodes soil, as well as causes subsidence above. In this case, cameras revealed that several bricks had become dislodged, creating a pathway for soil and groundwater to get in. The end result was a rapidly forming sinkhole.

The City of Atlanta was already consulting with Alchemy Spetec on some other projects, so they asked us to take a look. After reviewing the available information and making a site visit, it was determined that a multi-step plan would need to be undertaken to seal the pipe and reestablish soil compaction.

Powerful Polymers

The single-component polyurethane AP Fill 700 was selected for the sealing of the pipe and for the compaction grouting of the above soils. AP Lift 430 would be kept on standby in case further grouting was required to stabilize under the home foundation itself. As it turns out, this was indeed the case.

• AP Fill 700 has an adjustable set time and is highly expansive. It works in wet environments, perfect for this project. It can permeate loose soils and gravel and achieve compressive strengths in excess of 1000 psi.
• AP Lift 430 is fast and expands 24 times its original volume. It is strong and can support 7,000 lbs per square foot.
• Both products are NSF ANSI 61 approved as safe for potable water contact. This certification provides reassurance that these products will not leach any chemicals out into the soil.

Painless Procedures

As previously mentioned, there were several steps that had to be undertaken to complete this project. First, the bricks that had become dislodged were reaffixed back into place. Once that breach was sealed, AP Fill 700 was injected through the pipe walls in multiple areas around the breach. AP Fill 700 reacts when it contacts moisture and there was no lack of that at 25 feet deep. Regardless, twin streaming through an F-Valve Assembly was implemented to ensure a good resin/water mix. This approach rapidly filled all of the voids surrounding the pipe and also sealed several other small areas of weeping water infiltration.

The second step was to fill the sinkhole with loose dirt and gravel and then permeate that with AP Fill 700 to squeeze the soil and lock all of the backfill together. Half-inch injection pipes were installed down to the top of the pipe, then soil and gravel were backfilled to the surface. Once the backfill was in place, AP Fill 700 was injected and the probes were slowly extracted to insure a uniform measure of polymer throughout the soil column. When this is done in a grid pattern, the result is a lot of increased compaction and bearing capacity.

Once the sinkhole was repaired, concern remained about loss of soil compaction under the foundation of the home. The steps leading up to the front porch had settled away from the home indicating further bad soil was likely the case.

Alchemy-Spetec is a dealer for Pagani, a dynamic cone penetrometer (DCP) manufacturer out of Italy. We brought our unit out to the property and did 6 penetrometer tests across the front of the home next to the foundation. Four of the six tests revealed weight of hammer (WOH) readings which basically means zero compaction. The soil could not even support the weight of our machine. The city was on site to see the tests and immediately approved the compaction grouting beneath the front foundation. This is where the AP Lift 430 came into play.

Half-inch injection probes were installed across the entire front of the home next to the foundation. Probes were installed down to 8 feet which is where the soil became much stronger. AP Lift 430 was injected while the crew slowly extracted the probes - until lift was observed on the home. When lift was detected, the grouting ceased. This process was repeated across the entire front of the home on 4-foot spacing.

After the compaction under the footing was reestablished, the front steps that had settled away from the house were lifted back into place using AP Fill 430.

Rapid Results

The job was completed quickly without any excavation and dewatering. No curbs, road base, or utilities had to be removed or relocated. This approach saved enormous amounts of additional cost and delays.

Want more information on leak seal and geotech products?

This article is an excerpt from Episode 14 of Alchemy-Spetec's podcast The Injection Connection, featuring veteran coatings expert Murray Heywood. (If you'd rather view or listen, an audio/visual version of this excerpt is posted at the bottom of the article.)

Charlie Lerman: Now what would you say is maybe the most interesting job that you've been on - or unique or weird - or something that just stands out in your head (with grouting obviously)?

Murray Heywood: Well, I should have been more prepared for that question because I’ve been on so many projects. But one of the things that struck me a few years ago was at a water treatment plant in New Jersey. I was in the pipe gallery. You've got to remember, in the pipe gallery you have tanks on either side of you, and possibly tanks above you - all filled with water - none of which are lined. They're all just bare concrete. I’m walking through this because we're there to look at the pipe. They've got all this corroding pipe and they're kind of perplexed. These pipes are severely corroding, with all these issues and I’m walking through this huge pipe gallery. It's huge, it's long and wide and they're worried about their pipe. And meanwhile, there's water spraying and dripping and coming out of every pipe penetration and crack. It's like a rainforest in there basically. Have you ever been to Niagara Falls and been behind the falls?

Charlie: I haven’t, but my wife has.

Murray: Yeah, you can go behind the falls. It's kind of like that. And there's water coming out from everywhere. I say, "We can address the corrosion and take it off and repair it and do all that stuff, but you've got to fix this leak." They look at me and say, "Well, it's a water treatment plant." I reply, "Yeah, but this doesn't have to happen. This is not normal. This is not just part of the normal day that you just let water spew in and all over the place and expect to have good results." So I made a recommendation.

Charlie: Yeah.

Murray: And I think they actually addressed all of that in there, but I was just struck by how oblivious to it they were. There was so much water coming in. And then there was another situation here in Canada at a plant north of here. They had another situation where they had a tank on one side and a pipe gallery on another. Now in the previous example from New Jersey, the pipe gallery wasn't painted, the walls weren't painted, it was just a concrete room. In this one, they kind of wanted to dress it up, so they kept painting these walls. And every time they'd paint the walls, all these leaks were happening and the paint would come off. They must have to put like 40 coats of paint on this thing. Then I walk in one day and I say - because the paint was now at this point with all the peeling - "Yeah, this is always a problem. Well, it's not the paint that's a problem. It's the fact that you've got all this water coming out all over the place." And they reply, "Well, we've tried to stop it but we don't know how." So I gave them some instructions on how to do it. They got somebody in, I don't know who, and they fixed it. I’ve talked to them since then and they haven't had any further issues. So it's just that. As I said, it's the lack of education that there's a fix out there. And let's be honest, it's not rocket science, it's a relatively simple fix.

View the video version of this excerpt...

Want some information on Alchemy-Spetec products?

This article is an excerpt from Episode 14 of Alchemy-Spetec's podcast The Injection Connection, featuring veteran coatings expert Murray Heywood. (If you'd rather view or listen, an audio/visual version of this excerpt is posted at the bottom of the article.)

Charlie Lerman: There's something I always say and I want to run it by you because you could verify or tell me if I’m wrong on this. When you look at potable water tanks, those things are typically like three feet thick and they're chock-full of rebar. They're just stuffed full of rebar, so any type of drilling crack injection on them is just nightmarish. A lot of people don't like to do that. Normally what you get when those things leak, is that you just have a hairline crack because you have so much concrete in there. What I imagine happens a lot of times is that you have people come in with hydraulic cement. They rub that out, but you still then have three feet of concrete with water all the way through it. And all that reinforcing steel potentially rusting. You mentioned the freeze-thaw effect, and that's about 12 times expansion when water freezes.

Murray Heywood: Yes.

Charlie: But when you look at corrosion, N.ACE has put out that it's about seven or eight times expansion when the steel rusts.

Murray: Yes.

Charlie: So, it's not as dramatic as freeze-thaw but still, six times is going to blow up the concrete.

Murray: Well, you've got to remember that if you have rebar, it will expand about seven times but the tensile strength of concrete is very weak. Concrete does not hold itself together very well. It doesn't take much to start that expansion happening and to make the problem worse. So you have to keep the moisture out as much as possible. The thing with potable water, especially concrete potable water tanks, and ground storage tanks, is that if you want to become very unpopular, go into an AWWA, D110 prestressed concrete tank committee and mention protective coatings. They want to string you up because they want to sell it as maintenance-free and that you don't need to line it. And truly, they don't need to line it - except for when you start to get some deterioration and then you get water in. And once water gets in, then that whole deterioration is expedited. So you've got to keep the moisture out and you want to keep it away from the rebar. When you're talking about potable water tanks, a lot of them are engineered and pre-cast. But when you get into wastewater treatment plants, you'll find a lot of times mistakes are made and the rebar is too close to the surface. And then any water that gets in is going to create that issue much quicker because that rebar is going to get more moisture. It's going to expand quicker and cause more damage. So I think that where you see more need for grouting in the potable water world is in the treatment plants again because a lot of these plants are getting long in the tooth. Their concrete has a 50-year design life and we have no money to replace it. We barely have money to fix it. So I think grouting plays a role in both wastewater and water but certainly, on rebar you're correct - you've got to stop that moisture.

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Whether you think about it a lot or not, our wastewater system is crumbling and we spend billions, nationwide, each year treating groundwater that has entered our collection systems. This problem is too costly to ignore, but can be hard to address with the tight budgets many rural sewer districts are on.

On June 24, 2022, the EPA announced up to $18 million in available federal grant funding via a request for applications to provide training and technical assistance to serve small, rural, and tribal community wastewater systems. This funding will improve public health and environmental protection by helping to ensure that wastewater in these communities is safe and treated before being responsibly returned to the environment.

While the federal government is providing the grants, Alchemy-Spetec can train municipalities and their contractors on how to easily address the low-hanging fruit of water infiltration found in manholes and lift stations. Not only can we help you identify trouble areas in your collection systems but we also provide high-quality grouts coupled with the industry's top technical support.

August is just about booked out and there are only a couple of spots left for September for our manhole leak seal demonstrations. If you are unsure of how you would like to move forward, contact us to set up an online meeting to discuss your specific challenges and/or needs.

Want more information on leak seal products and equipment?

This article is an excerpt from Episode 14 of Alchemy-Spetec's podcast The Injection Connection, featuring veteran coatings expert Murray Heywood. (If you'd rather view or listen, an audio/visual version of this excerpt is posted at the bottom of the article.)

Murray Heywood: Water is a damaging substance when it gets in and starts working its way through concrete. And no coating - despite claims that people and manufacturers make about withstanding hydrostatic pressure and backside pressure - no, it won't. Not long-term. It might in the beginning until you drive away and maybe even until you cash to check perhaps, but water will be a problem at some point. And the only way to successfully do these things is by stopping the water from getting in. Don't let it get in, in the first place, and then it won't be a problem. That's why we line the insides to protect the surface. So we have to figure out some way to keep the moisture out. So grouting is it. And in a lot of cases, if you're talking about underground things of that nature, there are so many cool tricks that you grout geeks have taught me. These procedures can be done without as much invasive digging and prodding around, and ripping this out and putting this in. And you can do so much of it simply by knowing where to start and drilling holes and pumping grout in. I have learned a lot from you about it...a ton. It's one of those things that comes up all the time, but it's partially ignorance, partially indifference, and then just an afterthought.

Charlie Lerman: Right. I think a lot of it also comes down to - you have GCs and they're focused on their Gantt Charts and how to move this multimillion-dollar project along. Then you're talking about a small percentage of it, or it's not even a percent. It's a problem that's come up and they don't realize the long-term effects of just skipping over that because they're focused on what the fire is at that time right there. So a lot of the times we're brought in, we're dealing with people that are closing out a project or trying to finish it up. Now they're saying, "Oh, well, I heard months ago that it’s going to bite me in the butt and here it is now. I can't get my paycheck because we're still leaking on this tank" or whatnot.

Murray: Right. And probably one of the places that it's understood the most and it's used a lot in this way is the underground, in sewer manhole restoration. Most of the people that are playing in that game now at least understand inflow and infiltration and what it does to the system, and how it wreaks havoc on the plant and their capacity levels. I shouldn't say everybody, but anybody who's in the business has seen the classic manhole eruption. A few years ago, I was down in Louisiana in New Orleans for a conference. I can't remember whether it was WEFTEC or SSBC or something, and just outside our hotel, a huge rain event happened. You could hear the manhole lids dancing all around the streets. You could hear it. You could hear it, and people are saying, "What is that?" I’m replying, "Oh, just watch." Within probably five, six minutes all of a sudden, the manhole lids were coming off - and they're heavy. If you've never lifted one up, they're very heavy. And these things just popped out, and the water was spewing. When people see that, they kind of understand it. But it's understood a little bit more in that market. Where I find that there's a lack of understanding of it is in the wastewater treatment plant itself. Because there are all kinds of problems in water treatment and wastewater treatment with leakage and with cracks. I’ve been walking through plants, and there's just water dripping everywhere. But the mentality of the people who work there is like, "Is that a problem? It’s been doing that for years." They just walk by it, because it's always been there and they've never dealt with it. A lot of times you have to say, "Well, you know there's a solution." And their response is, "Oh, really? You know how to fix that? We've tried everything. We've put hydraulic cement in, and we've tried to plug it with silicone." They've tried everything. I say, "Yeah, there's actually a fairly simple way to fix this."

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