Claylock®

Developed in-house at Airey Taylor Consulting, the ClayLock® foundation system was patented October 2005. It stabilises low-rise housing; community, institutional and commercial buildings; rail, road and other civil works on reactive clay soils.

Previous approaches to foundation design on clay have worked to resist movement of these reactive soils, particularly differential movement across concrete slabs.  Despite the best efforts of the engineering community and approximately $315 million per year spent on foundational stiffening, cracking remains is a serious problem.  A 2005 study of 75,000 houses surveyed by Archicentre throughout Australia found an astonishing 38% were cracked.

ClayLock® complements natural forces to bring about lasting soil stability for each construction, removing the need for complex footing strategies. The technique involves:

• Artificially extending the footprint of the building to protect it from seasonal edge effects, using an inexpensive polyethylene membrane; and
• Accelerating the soil condition to its final moisture content beneath and around the slab during the first stages of construction

Polyethylene plays a key role as it prevents moisture escape in either liquid or gaseous form. Moisturisation is via a one-off irrigation beneath the newly cast slab and into the encapsulated extended footprint area. By doing this the clay “mound” or “dome” usually encountered after years of moisture equilibration, becomes the stable state under workable timeframes.

ClayLock® is the first significant advance in clay-related foundation design since the 1970’s when Australian researcher Dr John Holland’s world first research pre-empted the present design code AS 2870 “Residential Slabs and Footings – Construction”.

It contributes significantly to the international body of knowledge on foundation design, and now forms part of the range of solutions for building on clay offered by Advanced Substructures.

Airey Taylor Consulting’s further design capacity to cope with complex or difficult soil conditions is exemplified by the prestigious QV1 Office Building Complex. Meeting the design challenge of interbedded sands and clays under the concrete reinforced building was successfully overcome by the use of five pile-assisted rafts. This technical resolution permitted construction of 42 levels of open plan office space in record time.

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