Erickson Structural personnel were retained to seismically rehabilitate the third floor walls of this historic unreinforced masonry building without impacting the original architectural design. This challenge was met by using a unique design technique called “center coring.” Erickson Structural personnel carefully identified sites around the perimeter of the building to core through the center of the walls. After drilling and extracting rubble from each core, rebar was installed and encased in epoxy with fine-tuned viscosity to fill the cores and migrate through the adjacent voids for maximum reinforcement. The resulting building shows no sign of seismic upgrade, and meets the seismic demands required for local building codes.
Although the center coring solution proposed by Erickson Structural personnel was not the least expensive solution, it was by far the most effective method of preserving the building’s architectural and historic integrity, with the added benefit of allowing ongoing use of the dance hall throughout construction. No sign of the seismic upgrade is visible, yet the building is now extremely strong.
This project was featured in the Daily Journal of Commerce (DJC). Click here to read the article.
