Everton have announced new details around the structure of the new stadium that will “counter any minor settlement” that may occur.
The Blues are ramping up the construction of the new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock, which has been in the building phase for more than a year. Everton’s new home will be able to accommodate more than 52,000 supporters once it is completed.
In an update provided on the club’s website, Everton have confirmed that the stadium will be raised above the ground. This has been accomplished by a series of podiums that will limit the effects of settlement over the coming years.
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The stadium, the club say, will be supported by 2,766 concrete piles, each formed to a depth of around 18 metres through the dock infill and into the sandstone below.
Gerald Knights, the engineering lead for construction partner Laing O’Rourke, has detailed how the construction of Everton’s new stadium is going. Knights also explained why the decision was made to have the build raised above the ground.
“The dock location led us to design the stadium as a fully suspended structure of concrete piles and slabs suspended between the pile caps,” Knights told New Civil Engineer, via the club’s website.
“A decision was made early in the project to retain the dock’s silts, which isn’t particularly normal for this type of project.
“We did it because it is really great for the environment, although it does give rise to an engineering challenge.
“As the silts are compressible, settlement is inevitable. A lot of this settlement happens as soon as you put the sand in, and once we had put one metre of sand in the bottom of the dock, most of the settlement in the silt happened.
“Once we got up to dock ground level, the dock was settling somewhere around 5mm per week. We are now down to less than that a month.”
Knights added: “Essentially, that settlement will continue for decades.
“It will slow down to fractions of millimetres a year, but there are a few phases in the project’s lifetime when certain interventions will be needed to address that.
“For example, the club may have to relay the pitch in the off-season”.
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