2016
Have you heard of flowable fill?
Today “flowable fill” was used at Colby & Gale. Flowable fill is a combination of sand, water and other components in a liguid/slurry form, allowing it to “flow” into voids and cavities. It’s nearly self-leveling, and best of all compacts to a degree that equals or is greater than what I can achieve with a compactor in 8″ lifts. Here’s a website dedicated to flowable fill: Flowable Fill.


Flowable fill is a perfect solution for a few challenges at the job: a very large cavity under the existing bathroom, voids under the entrance floor and a portion of the old service pit that was above grade. Using the flowable fill Randy McClintick and his crew from McClintick Foundations were able to fill the areas mentioned above that either could not have been filled with traditional methods, or would have been too time consuming. Daryl Fraser needs to be back in operation as soon as possible so time is of the essence in this job. If flowable fill wasn’t used I would have had to move gravel into the excavated area one bucket at a time with the skid steer, and compact the gravel in 8″ lifts or layers, which would have taken two or three days. Additionally, I would not have been able to compact material in the cavity under the bathroom, or in the voids under the entrance floor. Instead, within a few hours Randy’s crew had prepped for, and poured four cement trucks full of flowable fill. Tomorrow, after the flowable fill has dried, Randy’s crew will prep the area for the new concrete slab, which will be poured on Wednesday. They will put down a layer of poly, install and tie the rebar, and install rebar dowels in the wall, existing slab and post pad.
