Shrewsbury road reopened after house filled with concrete to prevent collapse
A busy road leading into Shrewsbury town centre is open again after a house was filled with concrete to stop it collapsing.
St Michael's Street had been closed while emergency work was carried out at number 110, which was evacuated last month.
On Thursday workers filled its archway, front door and main corridor with a combination of pipes and geo-polymer foam, blocking both so they are now impassable.
The combination creates an incredibly strong honeycomb structure, which increases the load the building can bear – a measure which will allow a decision to be taken over whether the building needs to be demolished or not.
That work has not only stabilised the building, but allowed the road to reopen to traffic.
Tim Knight, managing director of Restek, the firm that carried out the work, explained what had been done to number 110.
"We used two very big 600ml diameter pipes stacked on top of each other, put them in with a tele-handler and grouted around them," he explained.
"It becomes one solid homogeneous mass where the corridor and the arch are.
"There are 200 cubic metres we had to grout. That is now one solid structural mass of geopolymer and the pipes as well and that what the building is standing on at the moment."
Residents were evacuated and placed into emergency accommodation last month after one of them raised the alarm.
A structural engineer's report declared the building was a danger to the public.
