Raising the subsided concrete floor of the warehouse of the Prisma shopping center

THE PROBLEM

URETEK was contacted by a shopping centre with a long history the city of Tartu, whose main tenant is Prisma – a beloved supermarket among the residents of Tartu. Considering the building conditions, the shopping centre was built on complicated soil and due to that the parts of the supermarket floors which had to bear heavier inventories and goods had started to sink. Fortunately, an inspection revealed that the sinking was only in the floors and the load-bearing structures were intact and without any damages. The area of the floor that had sunk in the warehouse and in the sales hall of Tartu Prisma was 500 m2 and 600 m2 respectively. Since the daily activities of Prisma could not be interrupted, the necessary works in the warehouse were performed in four consecutive nights and the works in the sales area in three consecutive nights without closing the shop for customers. This allowed the customers to maintain their daily rhythm during the repair works and did not entail any additional costs.

THE RESULT

Within the repair works, the soil underneath the floor was stabilised with URETEK technology. This included drilling holes with only 14 mm diameter to the floor in order to perform the injection. The method allows to avoid large-scale and noisy construction works and, what is especially important in food industry, works which create dust.

The other but not less important benefit of the method of URETEK is the fact that this technology allows to carry out large-scale renovation works without disturbing the customers and closing down the shop, which is especially crucial for shopping centres because it is known that closing a shop for two weeks may lead to a decrease in turnover, the recovery from which may take up to six months.