New Elevetor Project: extension of a refrigeration warehouse near Padua, Italy

Goal

Recently, a company based in Teolo – near Padua – working in the field of frozen foods storage for restaurants needed to expand its refrigeration warehouse. The entire warehouse had to keep a constant temperature of  -25°C in order to guarantee the food quality during all operations, before packaging and transport.

Unless countermeasures are taken, it is very likely that in negative cold storages the cold reaches the ground, lowering its temperature to below 0°C. The consequence is the freezing of the soil and a volume growth of the groundwater. This effect, known as frost-heaving, may cause several damages, as cracks or floor deformations and malfunction or even failure of the cold storage room with consequent damages to goods. It is therefore crucial to prevent this phenomenon efficiently and cost-effectively.

Solution

The traditional methods to prevent frost-heave are underfloor heating systems (electrical resistances or Pumped Fluid-Glycol) or forced ventilation. They both are very expensive, as they involve a relatively high initial investment and/or a high life-cycle cost. Natural ventilation is a method for frost-heave prevention that has the advantage of being inexpensive in construction and requiring low if any maintenance.

New Elevetor, Geoplast permanent crawl space formwork up to 3 m, is particularly suitable for cold storages’ natural ventilation, as it allows to create an open void in all directions. An efficient and reliable natural ventilation is thus guaranteed. In this case New Elevetor was the safest and most cost-effective way to avoid frost heaving.

Product used

In Teolo were used 3000 sqm. of New Elevetor H125. It allowed the creation of a ventilated cavity beteween the ground and the last layer of the building package, in order to completely eliminate moisture. Moreover, it will enable to avoid the formation of warps and cracks on the floor of the refrigeration building both at low and medium temperatures. The foundation formwork was very easy and fast to install, it was dry walkable during the setup operations and will guarantee an high load bearing capacity of the entire foundation.

Team

The company chose Geoplast because of its experience in the field of fridge cells and warehouses. The customer was very satisfied and impressed by the ease of use of New Elevetor and the quick final result. The work also allowed to keep intact the peculiarity of this plant, unique in the world because of its speed of order processing and working conditions of operators.

Learn more

The expansion of the refrigeration warehouse in Padua, Project
Projects with New Elevetor
Geoplast New Elevetor
Geoplast’s Foundations Solutions for Fridge Cells
Geoplast’s Foundations Solutions
Geoplast’s Project of a Fridge Cell in Brescia, Italy