Lukeis Residence – Foundation Remediation

Maddington, Perth, WA

AWARDS :

1998 Australian Consulting Engineers Australia 

Certificate of Recognition

In 1995, the Client approached the firm after consultation and advice from others which recommended expensive remedial solutions to the problem of extensive annual cracking occurring within his rental house property. The house was neither able to be let nor sold, except at a dramatic loss. Following geo-technical and structural research and development of the remediation system by Airey Taylor Consulting, the Client was guided by the firm in the implementation and monitoring of the process, and was able to fully restore the house to good aesthetic condition, able to be sold at a reasonable price.

The Client required restoration of his badly damaged brick house to a permanently uncracked and aesthetic condition. Unsightly cracked walls, movement of walls relative to cornices and ceilings caused a general degradation of the appearance and value of the property, and attempts to remediate the damage by cosmetic methods had proven unsuccessful. At time of consultation with ATC, the owner was unable to let the property.

The solution developed by ATC represents a highly cost-effective, general solution to the problem of remediation of clay foundation movement to damaged buildings with initially inadequate footings. Implementation is retrospective, and requires minimal specialist skills, little equipment and uses readily available materials, in stark contrast to the alternative costly and often unsuccessful method of underpinning footings. It has wide application in many parts of Australia where, due to the extremities of climatic fluctuations, seasonal variation of moisture within clay soils can cause movement around the perimeter of a building, resulting in cracking of walls and damage to finishes.

The Client was advantaged by the technique providing a permanent remediation to clay movement damaging the walls and finishes of his house. This was achieved for a cost of approximately $2,500.00, and the Client was able to then initiate cosmetic repairs to the house, which were, in effect, permanent. The value of the house was upgraded by about $20,000.00 yielding a cost benefit of the order of 800%.

This technique offers to the wider community a cost-effective method of avoiding significant on-going maintenance costs. It also addresses the commercially damaging effect of degradation where properties have become either unsaleable or unable to be leased, with conversion to an aesthetically pleasing and acceptable appearance of the structure and internal finishes.

The system developed represents a first class example of the interaction of the structural and geotechnical disciplines of engineering to achieve a technically sound, highly cost effective, socially desirable solution.