Concrete X-Ray for Rebar at Prudential Retirement, Hartford, CT

Prudential Retirement recently performed a major renovation on multiple floors at the Prudential Building, 280 Trumbull Street, Hartford, Connecticut. As part of the renovation, it was necessary for the electrical contractor, Net Services, LLC, and the plumbing contractor, The Wetherell Corp., to drill through the concrete slab at approximately 200 locations to install new electrical and plumbing services. Prior to doing so, however, the building’s property manager requested that a 2′ x 2′ area surrounding each proposed core drilling location be x-rayed to reduce the risk of damaging rebar or conduits embedded within the concrete slab. Therefore, both contractors hired us for our Level 2 concrete imaging services. During the survey, ground penetrating radar (GPR) technology indicated that the suspended concrete slab was approximately 10 inches thick and was composed of both an upper and lower layer of rebar. Unfortunately, this double layer of rebar made it extremely difficult to find conduits at the bottom of the slab, and compounding this problem was the fact that we were not granted access to scan below. As a result, one electrical conduit (located at the bottom of the slab) was damaged during core drilling. However, other than that, over 200 locations were core drilled without damaging a single rebar or conduit. Therefore, as a result of the x-ray survey, both companies were able to run new electrical and plumbing services to the renovated offices with minimal disruption to the existing building tenants.