Environmental Stone Columns
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Today’s development sites are frequently contaminated and any new development should not provide a threat to water supplies.
This is where Keller’s Environmental Stone Columns (ESC) can provide the perfect answer. In the long term, developments such as retail parks and supermarkets are covered with hard standing and this surfacing and the buildings are effectively a barrier to downward percolation of surface water. However, it is during the construction period that stone columns could provide a small risk to an aquifer below with flash storms or similar.
Keller can mitigate this risk by installing ESC’s. ESC’s have a minimum one metre thick lean mix concrete plug at their base installed with a modified bottom feed vibro rig. This technique prevents contact of the stone column with any permeable stratum which could be an aquifer but allows the benefits of vibro to be taken advantage of.
