This article is an excerpt from Episode 15 of Alchemy-Spetec’s podcast The Injection Connection, featuring an interview with Seawall Repair Network®’s Ken Braunlich. The Injection Connection is hosted by Charlie Lerman. (If you’d rather view or listen, an audio/visual version of this excerpt is posted at the bottom of the article.)
Charlie Lerman: A couple of key points on lightweight products versus cement – when you look at cement, you’re at about 150-145 pounds per cubic foot and the material we’re using, it is two to three pounds per cubic foot, I believe, the SW-RP1. And then the other thing I always like to say – there’s a reason the Grand Canyon exists. It’s not that water is stronger than rock. It’s that water over time will just erode and win. So if you try to fight water, you’re always going to lose. Dealing with hydrostatic pressure and allowing it to release, we’re not fighting it anymore, we’re working with it. And it’s just a lot better of a repair method.
Ken Braunlich: That’s a great point. I just got back from Australia not too long ago, and they also see this issue of inexperienced contractors dumping cement behind waterfront land retention systems like seawalls. People have to remember, a waterfront land retention system is just about always going to have liquefied soil on the landward side. And when you try to introduce a very heavy cementitious material, it’s going to sink every single time. I have seen this without exception everywhere, from coast to coast, in places like Puerto Rico, Alaska, and Australia, and it’s an ongoing battle.
So really in the context of everything that you just said, we’re changing the paradigm not just for property owners, not just for business owners that are on waterfronts but for the engineering community, for the governments that we are educating on this technology, this innovation. It is a significant advancement for the stabilization and preservation of infrastructure in general.
View the video version of this excerpt…