The gabion walls along the road near Sabie in Mpumulanga are now almost complete, there are four walls in total with various lengths. The first retaining wall is 4 metres high and is used to retain the cutslope-embankment, reduce water velocities off the tailings slope and act as a rock catch wall for silt and rock/debris coming off the cut slope, thus preventing this material falling onto the roadway.

The second gabion wall below the roadway(halfway up the fill slope) will prevent lateral movement of soils from next to and below the roadway. Thus reducing the risk of roadway settlement and failure, we assisted with the supply of gabion materials, geotextile and toolsets to site. When the work started we assisted the contractor with the on-site gabion training during initial erections which went off well in the end and made for rapid erection and skills transfer on site. This gabion project should be complete by end October 2009.

Please view the rock spoil photo below and note the reason that most gabion contractors allow for about 30% waste or fines in the rock costing calculation, as this finer material generally cannot be used inside the gabion container as the rock size is to small or consists predominently of finer material.

We suggest the use of gabions tool sets to improve gabion installations on sites, our gabion frames shown in the photo below allow for better basket shape once filled correctly. The baskets should be tensioned horrizontally or vertically before the filling process takes place, the tension direction is dependant on whether you have an external horrizontal or vertical mesh direction. Please contact us for further explanation regarding this interesting concept. All gabion walls generally use a geotextile behind and below the wall to reduce fine soil leaching through the gabion wall.

P.S. A photo of our gabion tool set is shown under the news item drop down as well as our new gabion installation video.

Gabions are a common application in the world and we try to help wherever we can to show how easy they are to be installed on sites using a local unskilled labor force.

The director – Louis Cheyne is shown in one of the photo’s below..!!

 

We offer gabion tool sets and unskilled gabion installation training on construction sites to enable ease of installation and increase labor productivity even on complex installations. We can make use of unskilled locally available labor and upskill these people to enhance their future employment options in future. We offer training certificates upon the successful completion of the gabion installation course.

Our tool set option makes the erection task easier and highly productive, kindly contact us for further information regarding this news article, we look forward to hearing from you.

We have just completed a great looking gabion revetment wall in Pretoria for Steinmuller who do all the steel pipework for Eskom’s mothballed power plants to be re-commissioned in Mpumulanga soon.

The wall designed was originally to a height of 6m with a length of 440m. However funds were short and eventually after cost cutting excercises the final wall was erected to a height of 5m by 105m long. This work was undertaken by about 14persons each day with a TLB to help load the rock quicker from stockpile directly into the baskets, achieving about 1.5-2.0m3 per man per day with machine help to lift the rock to the higher levels. Normally gabion works allow 1m3/man/day for installation purposes. A total quantity of 540m3 of gabion walling was installed on this site. The wall base was founded to a depth of 0.5m passive toe resistance in front of the wall with a pathway in front of it. The gabion facing was rotated into the embankment with a 4degree batter slope to further enhance stability of the wall. The walls base width was 1.5m for the first two gabion levels with subsequent layers of 1×1m. We allowed for a 400mm horizontal step on each level at every one metre change in height.

To reduce time taken to infill the baskets and to reduce rock costing on site a smaller blatfurnace slagment rock was used(from nearby) to infill the rear 67% wide section of the gabion wall. Normal granite rock for the front face was used to provide the neat looking front face evident in the pictures as shown below.

Gabion construction work was undertaken by the highly experienced team of Mr Reg Laskey from Littlecreek Civils – 082-8944155 with Gabion Baskets assisting with initial designs and price estimates and the final supply of gabion, geotextile and geogrid materials to site.

Some photo’s and design drawings are shown below of the works completed, kindly contact us for any further information you require about this interesting project.