The Mitchell Building
207 E. Michigan Street
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CATEGORIES:
Underpinning and Structural Wood Pile Repair |
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OBJECTIVE:
Stabilization of the historic Mitchell Building, which was sinking due to rotting foundation pile.
SOLUTION:
Barthenheier was able to arrest the foundation loss and mitigate the subsidence that had already occurred. By excavating along the columns and wall lines, and removing the rotted pile down to stable wood and the water table, the mechanism undermining the building was halted. From there, the void left by the removed wood and dirt was filled in with solid concrete to support columns and walls.
A recent Milwaukee Magazine article (February, 2012) states, in part,
Stabilization of the historic Mitchell Building, which was sinking due to rotting foundation pile.
SOLUTION:
Barthenheier was able to arrest the foundation loss and mitigate the subsidence that had already occurred. By excavating along the columns and wall lines, and removing the rotted pile down to stable wood and the water table, the mechanism undermining the building was halted. From there, the void left by the removed wood and dirt was filled in with solid concrete to support columns and walls.
A recent Milwaukee Magazine article (February, 2012) states, in part,
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Barthenheier had to devise an innovative way to repair a foundation without removing the building or causing its collapse. The work must be done with hand tools that are considerably more primitive than the steam pile drivers that originally pounded the virgin timbers into the earth some 135 years before. And done in temperatures that could rise to 150 degrees in this steam-heated structure. The building has a dirt-floor basement, and employees dug four feet through the rock-hard soil, working on only one face of a single column at a time, exposing the piles with the care of an archaeologist. Each was rotted and mottled, pockmarked by gaps, resembling the weathered piers of an abandoned dock. Workers would probe to find sound wood and cut off the rotted tip….Workers would reinforce the pilings horizontally with steel rebar, fill the vertical gap with a new stainless steel shaft, enclose the works in concrete and go on to the next pile. |
RESULT:
The building is structurally sound, and the client’s confidence in Barthenheier Construction’s technical skill and capacity for solving complex problems is such that they have continued to offer us their business.
The building is structurally sound, and the client’s confidence in Barthenheier Construction’s technical skill and capacity for solving complex problems is such that they have continued to offer us their business.