Renovation and the Home

LECA® LWA can be used in all elements of construction from foundations to chimney fill.

Civils & Infrastructure

Leca® LWA is used extensively as a lightweight aggregate for civil engineering and structural applications, such as Rail, Highways and Bridges.

Water Management and Reducing Gas Emissions

Leca LWA can be used to manage the rainwater from a catchment. Water interacts with Leca LWA in a way that allows the material to provide water detention.

Coastal

When constructing a quayside and coastal development, soft ground conditions often call for the use of lighter fills to guard against slide or deformation which can damage structures. A number of solid berth structures have been successfully built over recent years using Leca® Lightweight Expanded Clay Aggregate.

It can be used to an advantage in many quay designs such as sheet pile, sheet pile cell and caisson structures and is also used as fill replacement in solid berth structures when quayside waters are dredged to greater depths. The stresses and strain of a fluctuating tide to a retaining structure can also be reduced with Leca® Lightweight Expanded Clay Aggregate limiting horizontal pressures from the material being retained.

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Coastal Protection

With deep compaction layers and speed of installation when using Leca® Lightweight Expanded Clay Aggregate de-watering is kept to a minimum and the void filled in a fraction of the time compared to using traditional fills. By depositing the Leca® Lightweight Expanded Clay Aggregate directly into place from a boat equipped with its own offloading gear, exceptionally fast progress can be made with 250-300 cubic metres per hour quite achievable. The additional advantage in this coastal location is one of an environmental nature. Leca® Lightweight Expanded Clay Aggregate is a completely natural product, is an inert and stable material with no risk of leachate seepage into the surrounding waterway.

Leca® Lightweight Expanded Clay Aggregate is a completely inert material, which does not discharge any harmful substances into a water body. Therefore, it can be recommended for the construction of ports and quays as an eco-friendly option.

Coastal Pipelines and Culverts

Pipelines

Leca® Lightweight Expanded Clay Aggregate is an ideal quayside and coastal development solutions for settlement control and frost insulation of drainage and other pipelines and can provide the key to completely eliminate the settlement of the pipework installed in weak soil conditions. Differential settlements can be also prevented by a transition structure, consisting of a mass constructed from Leca® Lightweight Expanded Clay Aggregate. In the context of pipeline design for coastal development, the transition structure is used to equalize the settlement differences between structures which will settle and those which will not. It is also applied to reduce the frost heave difference between frost-susceptible and frost-resistant structures. The transition structure shall be long enough to secure the allowed tolerance of inclination.

Culverts

Leca® Lightweight Expanded Clay Aggregate provides an excellent solution for coast and quayside development to reduce horizontal and vertical loads which impact culverts, pipelines and pipe bridges. It not only reduces the weight of the fill structure, but also provides frost insulation and reduces the thickness of the fill layer.