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Overview

Soil Nail walls with shotcrete are a common support of excavation (SOE) or shoring technique used to retain soil during excavation and building construction, but they can be a great option to save significant construction costs for new construction projects that utilize basement walls as a structural retaining wall.

Solutions

The FSGC team chose to utilize a Soil Nail wall with shotcrete as this would provide valuable savings to the client. Our team installed it by making approximately 5-foot vertical cuts on the back face of the lower-level wall and then installing soil nails. A reinforcement waler grid was installed and shotcrete was applied over this reinforcement and soil nails resulting in a rigid reinforced wall. These vertical cuts and construction steps continued to the bottom of footings (BOF). The soil nail wall now served three purposes:

• Provided personnel protection (shoring wall), so the work could safely proceed at the bottom of the wall.
• Resisted the lateral soil forces, resulting in a smaller wall footing, reduced wall thickness, and no wall reinforcement.
• Soil Nail wall can be used going forward as a forming and anchor side for the new basement wall enabling a blind-side or one-sided wall pour.

Results

The FSGC team’s decision to utilize a shotcrete approach not only saved the client over $200,000 but also drastically reduced the time spent on the project by one to two weeks.