Woodfibre LNG Platform Piles
Seventy cubic metres of Five Star® underwater high-strength grout, mixed on our own barge in Howe Sound and pumped thirty metres to the ocean floor. Six piles, one continuous pour.
Thirty metres down, with nowhere to stop.
A grout column being placed on the ocean floor cannot wait on the next truck.
The six piles carrying the Woodfibre platform had to be socketed into the seabed thirty metres beneath the surface. Grout placed that far below the waterline has to arrive as one unbroken column. Pause the supply and you risk a cold joint, washout at the interface, and a socket that no longer performs the way the design assumed.
There is no ready-mix plant on Howe Sound, and no practical way to ferry batched grout out to the work and still hit a continuous placement window. Whatever supplied that pour had to produce on the water, on demand, and not stop until the last pile was full.
From the barge to the seabed, without stopping.
We set our volumetric mixer directly on the barge and fed it from a silo of additional material staged alongside. The truck discharged straight into a line pump, which carried the grout thirty metres down to the ocean floor and into each pile. Because the mixer batches from dry ingredients on demand, the silo could top it up mid-pour, so the line never ran dry and the pour never stopped.
Batching on the water changes the maths.
Sand, cement and water travel dry and separate, and only become grout at the moment of placement. That is what makes a continuous pour possible thirty metres out on the water, and what keeps the marine environment clean while it happens.
- Mix and place on location, out on the water
- Reload from the silo without breaking the pour
- No cold joints across six pile sockets
- Batch only the volume each pile actually needs
- Spec held constant, batch after batch
- No washout or rejected loads into Howe Sound
Five Star® Cementitious Underwater High-Strength Grout.
A pump-grade, non-shrink cementitious grout engineered to be placed below the waterline without washing out, which is exactly what a thirty-metre tremie placement demands.
Have a pour coming up?
Tell us the scope, volume and timing. Our estimating team responds with an on-site production plan built around your schedule.