StrataWeb Geocell – The Soft Soil Solution!

Do you have trouble with soft soil on a worksite or around your home? Is it giving you headaches around how to support foot and vehicle traffic? Or are you building paths or driveways around large tree roots and are unsure how to support the soil to protect them?

StrataWeb Geocell offers an easy-to-install solution. When filled with granular materials, StrataWeb creates a three-dimensional erosion barrier and structural bridge that uniformly distributes weight-bearing loads. It’s ideal for use on banks or sloped areas where soil erosion can hinder the growth of new vegetation. Another use is underneath permeable pavement surfaces, whether that’s gravel or soil. It also comes in different heights, so you can create platforms around tree roots, protecting the soil from compaction, allowing tree roots to receive the nutrients they need.

In this blog, we’ll look at these three areas of construction, and the specific ways StrataWeb Geocell can create a more stable surface for your project.

How to prevent soil erosion and support plant growth on sloped land?

StrataWeb Geocells can be used on sloped areas of up to 60^o. This makes StrataWeb the perfect for any sloped land that may require traffic access, but it’s also an ideal solution when establishing vegetated areas on retaining slopes or steep residential and commercial banks. The honeycomb structure prevents soil from eroding away due to over-saturation. While this is ideal for grassed areas or pavement surfaces, StrataWeb also gives new planting the protection they need, allowing seedlings or new planting to establish their root systems which will then further stabilise the slope. Tendons are strung within the cells to keep the honeycomb structure in place, while the Geocell holds the soil and protects the plant roots.

StrataWeb can either be secured in an anchor trench and stretched down the slope, or it can be stacked in layers to build a stabilised bank. This makes it ideal for creating a variety of landscaping features, including grassed ponds for natural filtration or water retention.

Tree root protection solution

Due to the rate of urbanisation, it is now far more common to find trees located in areas of commercial or residential development. If you’re building paths, accessways or driveways around mature trees, you’ll want to ensure their protection, especially when construction work is being carried out nearby.

StrataWeb Geocell is a great way to protect tree roots from pedestrian and vehicular traffic. This is especially necessary when construction is happening around established trees and you’re wanting to prevent any root damage from the use of heavy machinery. In addition to the StrataWeb placed under your accessway, you can also carefully place StrataWeb around the trunk and roots systems. The geocell will prevent subsoil compaction around the roots by distributing the weight of the traffic. Less compaction means more permeable soil, so water, nutrients and oxygen will keep filtering through to help maintain a healthy tree, and you greatly reduce the risk of damaging the roots from the use of heavy machinery.

For temporary site access, once operations are complete, StrataWeb Geocells can be removed, allowing you to change the accessway into a different landscape feature. For permanent access requirements, StrataWeb can simply be left in place. You may even want to cover it with a more permanent pavement surface material. Either way, you’ve created a safe construction zone while ensuring the tree roots remain undamaged.

StrataWeb Geocell is available in depths of 75mm, 100mm, and 200mm, so it’s easy to stagger the cells right up to the tree if full protection or support is required.

Supporting pavements within soft soil areas

If you’re working on a site that is heavily waterlogged and extremely muddy due to constant, heavy rain or a higher water table, it’s often impossible to use cars or trucks without digging up the site, let alone getting site access for heavy machinery. What you’re ideally after is a way to build a temporary (or permanent) accessway to allow machinery into the site. Or, if you’re on a farm or rural area, you’ll be looking to create stable runways using exiting site material. StrataWeb offers a great solution for supporting the pavement surface without necessarily having to cart in extra material.

Once stretched out over your pavement area and filled with granular material, the cells are ideally filled with gravel for roading surfaces but can be filled with soils from site and lightly compacted. The soil will remain free draining but won’t form ruts or degrade. The honeycomb structure of StrataWeb evenly distributes the weight of vehicles, making it easy to create accessways into your site. It’s as simple as removing an area of soft soil along where you want the accessway to be (you can take it away or put it to one side to be reused), placing the StrataWeb Geocell, then filling the cells with new fill or reusing what was already there.

The benefits of StrataWeb Geocell:

• Provides a cost-effective solution to long-term Tree Root Protection.
• Provides ease in transportation and on-site handling due to collapsible cells.
• Ensures rapid and simple installation that conforms to most terrain profiles.
• Withstands high weight-bearing loads.
• Is resistant to biological attack and a wide range of soil-borne chemicals.

For any soft soil stabilisation, whether it’s on flat, uneven or sloped land, StrataWeb Geocell is the prefect way to prevent soil erosion while protecting new plantings and root systems. And because it comes compacted and then stretched out onsite, it’s easy to transport enough product to cover a large area.

StrataWeb is available as a special order from Bunnings stores nationwide.