Ground engineering

Ground engineering

The company Karl Weiss Technologies GmbH is equipped to carry out all common types of pit shoring works with its own plant and staff. Furthermore, we have our own steel warehouse with a mobile crane, where we store various types of support girders and sheet piles so we can react quickly if they are needed.

For more complex services we have equipment such as a lattice boom crane, pile drivers (leader-guided), sheet pile presses, crawler excavators, telescopic excavators, free riding units and large diameter rotary drilling rigs at our disposal.

  • Bored piles and diaphragm walls
  • Sheet piles and Trough pits
  • Pit shoring
  • Earthworks and water engineering
  • Grouting injections and special methods

Bored piles and diaphragm walls

In cooperation with the firm Bauer Schrobenhausen, our firm has developed a leader-guided combination machine capable of producing both piles and diaphragm walls to extend our ground engineering services. The machine can easily be adapted on site from piling to diaphragm wall work.

Our firm executes bored piling works for foundation piles as well as retaining walls for pit shoring, whether tangent or secant walls, or single piles. Diameters of 620mm, 880mm and 1180mm can be bored up to a depth of 27.5m.
For ground that is difficult to drill, our hydraulic casing oscillator can also be used. The vibration-free removal of reinforced concrete and obstacles made of concrete or stonework is also a possibility. In our company, diaphragm walls are produed as a one-phase diaphragm wall and can be used later to float in sheet piles and PE sheets, also for landfill. The diaphragm walls are 60cm wide with a trench depth of up to 29m. An automatically operated mixing plant adds the slurry suspension.

Sheet piles and trough pits

We carry out sheet pile work both for temporary pit retaining walls and for permanent sheet pile constructions. Watertight trough pits consisting of sheet pile profiles with sealed sheet pile joints and horizontal pit sealing are particularly common in inner-city areas.

We are able to insert all customary Z- and U-shaped sheet pile profiles according to the technical demands of the ground. Two of our own leader-guided rigs are available for these works. Both rigs are fitted with an additional drilling drive which can enable relief drilling work to be carried out if necessary. A self-advancing sheet pile press is used to insert individual piles vibration-free. Depending on geological or local circumstances, watertight troughs built with sheet pile profiles can have a high pressure injection base or an underwater concrete base slab.

Soldier pile walls

Using our own equipment, we build pit linings (Berlin- or Essen-style pit lining) using vibration, also statically variable or vibration-free by means of cased und uncased drilling. Timber beams are used for bracing, sometimes shotcrete may be added. The shoring system can be free-standing or back-anchored, using waling.

Since we have our own steel store and machinery (two leader-guided combined piling and drilling rigs, one large drilling rig along with several telescopic excavators with free-riding capacity) the necessary shoring work can be carried out promptly. Our own welders can instal waling girders, if necessary, which can be back-anchored accordingly. In difficult soil conditions, support girders can also be driven using a drop hammer, particularly if the girders need to bear the load for foundations. When vibrating in the girders, we monitor the vibrations in the ground to demonstrate that they have no negative impact on neighbouring buildings.

Earthworks and water engineering

With the right selected machinery we can comprehensively tackle large earth movement work. We also independently undertake water engineering works, both waterside and landside.

Depending on the type and scope of work, we use our own wheeled and tracked excavators to execute the entire works when carrying out diverse earthworks both above and below groundwater level. We organise and carry out the necessary soil transportation up to and including the professional disposal of earth and demolition waste, which allows us to tackle larger and more complex construction pits.
In the field of water engineering, river bank shoring such as steel sheet piles, wooden piles fences and riprap all feature in our range of services, as well as driving pile moorings. All of the plant we deploy in water engineering projects uses environmentally friendly hydraulic oils.

Alternative methods

Our wide range of equipment allows us to design alternative proposals for a particular project. These customized proposals often offer a more economical alternative to conventional building methods.

One example of an economical solution on a planned microtunnelling site is replacement drilling with liquid soil in layers of unsuitable ground such as peat, organic silt and larger obstacles.

Grouting injections for stability and sealing are carried out using the sleeve pipe process. In this way, watertight and friction-locked grouting injection bodies such as the structural waterproofing or securing of excavation pits can be produced.
In confined urban areas the "drilling against the wall' process using a continuous flight augur and casing has many advantages for concreting works. Micropiles or the slurry-supported vibration-free insertion of steel girders can be executed.

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