Low-vibration excavation in tight places

Everyone knows that Luxembourg is not a large country with very limited space and nowhere is this truer than in Luxembourg city center.  Finding space to build is impossible and as a result, parking is also very scarce.

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When a space became available in Rue Aldringen for the construction of a new apartment block, space constraints were going to be one of the biggest hurdles for the contractor to overcome.  The project required the demolition of a building with minimal space between it and the two neighboring structures.  To provide 40 parking spaces for the tenants in the new apartments, it was also necessary to excavate a hole 10 m deep covering an area of 30 m x 30 m for an underground parking garage.  The ground to be excavated extended right up the foundation walls of the adjacent buildings and the work had to be carried out without damaging these walls.

Entrapaulus Construction SA of Luxembourg has many years’ experience using Erkat drum cutter excavator attachments and they were given the contract to excavate the foundations for the new building.  They decided to carry out the work using a method that combined the use of a modified drum cutter with cutting wheel and a hydraulic breaker.  They took advantage of the drum cutters low vibration properties to excavate a 500 mm deep slot right up against the boundary walls to insulate them from the vibrations of the hydraulic breakers.  They then used the drum cutter to excavate similar slots parallel to the exterior slot and then to use the breaker to break out the material between two slots.

Buildings in Luxembourg are located on hard sandstone foundations and this rock presented its’ own challenges for the equipment being used.  Sermatec SA, the local Erkat dealer, proposed using an ERC 2000 drum cutter with integrated rotation unit fitted with a special slot cutting wheel on one side.  The integrated rotation unit allowed the slot cutting wheel to be positioned correctly regardless of where the excavator was located in the very confined space.  This proved to be the perfect solution for Entrapaulus who have been using the drum cutter since the end of January 2016.   Thanks to the experienced crew on site, the excavation descended below ground level at a rate of 1.5 to 2 meters per week; fast enough to meet the tight time schedule for completion of the project.

Thanks to the modular design of Erkat drum cutters, it is a simple task to convert the ERC 2000 back to a conventional drum cutter for normal trenching or demolition applications.