As mentioned in the week 15 post, the beams were capped last week. The encasements came off last Friday 25th of October. In the meantime, the groundwork team from Spaw have been busy getting the grounds to a state where it is level so they can start the excavation of the spoil from within the piled retaining wall with their digger.

To do this safely, they will need to prop the beam using steel re-inforcement. Essentially, two bars of steel across.

Propping

A bored pile retaining wall can stand unsupported and acting in cantilever up to a limit. For deep excavations, piled retaining wall designs may require temporary propping, bracing or anchoring. At Dianthus, the water table is quite high so we don’t want the retaining wall to collapse on itself due to water pressure or ingress. To enable the ground workers to dig and put a slab at the bottom of the basement, they need to prop the piled retaining walls. In our case, what they’ve done is propped across the excavation from wall to wall, These are heavy and obstruct headroom in the excavation. See the photos above and below.

Next week,the excavation and de-watering will start before we put in the bottom slab and start the Sika membrane to waterproof the wall.

As mentioned in the Structural Engineering post, the props will remain in place until the basement slab is in place.

Here are some photos from today with the props in place.