Tilt-Up Building Lift & Stabilization at California Winery

The Challenge

Foundation settlement threatens Rombauer Winery’s main office stability.

Rombauer Vineyards has been making wines in Napa Valley for forty years, producing award-winning vintages and remarkable varietals that have been noted across the industry. Rombauer’s main office building is a tilt-up building constructed in 1991.

Throughout the years the tilt-up building served as the vineyard’s main office building, as well as its laboratory and blending facility. Over the past 2 years, Rombauer’s personnel began noticing some issues with their foundation showing signs of settlement and knew the tilt-up building needed to be lifted and stabilized.

Key Facts

The Solution

Groundworks executes strategic lift and stabilization plan.

The settlement signs came in the form of a floor that was slightly unlevel and some subtle separation in their tilt-up panel walls. After working with RGH Consultants, a geotechnical engineering firm with offices in Napa, it was observed the building was showing signs of distress in the northeast corner of the building relative to the interior of the building.

The settlement was likely caused by surface water infiltration into the clay soil under their 6’x6’x4’ deep spread footings. Rombauer chose to remediate this issue as soon as possible in order to minimize future settlement and keep the issues from getting worse.

Through a bid process, Rombauer chose to go with Groundworks based on our experience and plan approach. The plan was to address each of the spread footings by providing piers on each side of the footers. The pier distribution was based on load calculations and to strategically address the areas with the highest settlement.

The Impact

Rombauer Winery’s building stability and safety restored.

The lift approach varied between each footer, with footers being lifted in sequence to ensure the panels maintained their integrity and minimizing shifts between the panels. After the lifts were completed, Groundworks then stabilized the soils, filled the voids, and made sure the interior slabs were to grade using its proprietary geotechnical polyurethane. Rombauer was very pleased with the project results and all project goals were accomplished.