Mineshaft Closures Boise, Idaho
The once-booming mining industry has left its mark across the United States – literally. Today, thousands of abandoned mineshafts still exist right underneath our feet. Abandoned mine sites are a great safety hazard and they pose a dangerous threat to life above. As residential and recreational areas begin to spread, they are now sharing the very same territory as some of these hazardous shafts. Old mine shafts pose the threat of cave-ins, falls, insufficient oxygen, poisonous gasses, toxic chemicals, explosives, and dangerous wildlife. Many of these mine shafts are in remote locations and have limited access for heavy equipment to reach them. Deep mine shafts, extra large mine openings and unstable ground around mine shaft openings pose challenges, limitations and extreme costs for many traditional methods of filling them in. To bring stability back to these grounds, we offer tactful solutions by filling them using our geotechnical spray foam solutions and/or geotextile fabrics.
How We Can Help
With the increased dangers that old mine shafts pose, our geotechnical foams are an excellent cost effective solution to closing and abandoning old mine shafts. Our geotechnical foams are environmentally friendly, water blown and highly resistant to acid-rock drainage. Within seconds/minutes of mixing our two part liquid foams they expand rapidly (usually 30 to 40:1) to fill voids and cracks of the mine shaft opening. The geotechnical foam quickly hardens creating an extremely rigid plug that firmly bonds to the surrounding rock of the mine shaft. The new foam plug is extremely strong and shrink resistant which results in a secure mine closure. Since the geotechnical foam creates a tight bond with the surrounding rock it helps protect against groundwater contamination as well.
One of the main advantages of our expandable geotechnical foams is that they can close large mine openings quickly while only using a small amount of material vs using dirt, rock or concrete. When closing vertical mine shafts we can use geotextile fabric and secure it across the opening. After the geotextile fabric has been laid we can shoot the liquid foam from a safe distance onto the fabric creating a lightweight but incredibly strong foam plug. After the foam has cured the opening can be backfilled with the surrounding soils creating an environmentally friendly and safe mine closure.
Accessing remote sites can be a problem when dealing with mineshaft closures. This is not the case with our geotechnical foam solutions; they can be easily transported in reasonable quantities using 4-wheel UTVs or ATVs, horse back, bush plane or helicopter.
For more information on closing a mineshaft with foam, call today.
As you can see, our geotechnical spray foam solutions have numerous advantages over rock, dirt and concrete.
Less Material
Less Cost
Lightweight
Fast Installation
Extremely Strong
Eco-friendly
Effective Seal
Easily Transported