Gabion Retaining Wall, Carbis Bay Hotel – UK

Project Overview

Carbis Bay Hotel are investing £8 million in a beach front regeneration project which would feature an exclusive wedding venue, conference centre, restaurants, and community facilities. The scheme involved construction of a new piled wall to create space for the development at beach level, but given the site’s steep cliff terrain and limited space a temporary supporting platform was required to accommodate the piling rig.

Solution

Temporary gabion baskets were constructed up to heights of 6m. To alleviate the risk of over overturning, on the third tier of baskets 125mm diameter plastic sleeves were constructed into the gabions to allow for the installation of Platipus B4 anchors. The completed baskets were backfilled with imported fill with an internal angle of friction of 35° and anchors were installed to depths of 5m 20° below the horizontal.Each anchor was proof loaded to 30kN and locked off at a working load of 25kN, the remaining 3 tiers of gabions were then constructed to complete the piling rig platform.

Anchor System: B04TC galvanised spheroidal graphite iron anchor c/w 6m of 12mm Ø galvanised steel wire tendon, 300mm x 300mm galvanised steel load plate, bronze hemi-ball washer and 12mm galvanised steel wedge grip.

Quantity: 21      Design Life: 5 yrs      Soil Type: Fill