Flood Brothers Disposal needed a new waste transfer station located in the Brighton Park neighborhood on the Chicago’s South Side. At the new 87,000 sq. ft. facility, Raffin Construction poured 4,000 cubic yards concrete for foundations and walls and 3,500 cubic yards of concrete slab on grade. A total of 360 tons of rebar was fabricated and installed.

Award-Winning Decorative Concrete Wall

Raffin Construction was challenged to build a barrier wall for a waste transfer station to visually separate it from the surrounding neighborhood. Using creative concrete construction solutions, the team delivered a 200 ft. long, 14 in. thick decorative concrete wall with an architectural finish on both sides. Both the forming system and form liner were specifically selected because of their unique suitability for this project. The Peri Maximo gang forming system’s unique tie technology improved forming efficiency and increased safety. This was especially important because of the project’s compressed schedule. Reckli 2/49 Saale single-use form liner was used to achieve the architectural finish. The finished wall is 13 ft.-6 in. tall and required 10 ft. of exposed architectural finish above grade, which varied. Since the form liners were 12 ft. tall, the Raffin Construction team problem-solved how and where to step them up along the slope so that at least 10 ft. of architectural finish was consistently exposed. Great care was taken to hide form liner joints and a support liner was added to help the wall withstand head pressure. The wall was placed in one pour with self-consolidating concrete to accomplish a uniform finish throughout.

The decorative concrete wall was awarded 2nd place for Architectural Cast-in-Place Concrete Structures under 5,000 SF in the Decorative Concrete Council Awards Program for 2022.