Repair and retrofit using

external post-tensioning
BY KAREN J. BARCHAS

agging floor slabs, cracked

beams, spalled concrete.
All are symptoms of a sick
building that signal the
need for major repairs. No construction material or type of building is immune; such stru c t u ra l
problems occur in steel, reinforced
concrete, prestressed concrete, and
wood office buildings, condominiums, hotels, and parking garages.
The causes can be naturalsuch
as earthquakes, or man-made
such as design errors, construction
flaws, or adjacent construction activity. A healthy structure also may
require significant modification
for example, to increase live-load capacity if the owner wishes to accommodate a change in occupancy.
Whatever the cause and whether the
building was sick or healthy, until recently, the owners repair or retrofit
options were limitedand costly.

able to building occupants and

owners. Rather than face these obstacles, some owners opt to tear
down and start from scratch.

The external post-tensioning

alternative
There is an alternative to the
steel-beam, concrete-topping, and

The traditional approaches

Where access and layout permit,
the usual fix is to add steel beams
underneath sagging floors and a
concrete topping. The beams may
require steel support columns, either at the buildings periphery or
through its public areas. And steel
beams generally must be designed
for full dead and live loads, not just
the strength deficiency, thus escalating material quantities and costs.
Although this method may
achieve its objective, the cost, disruption to utility services, and unsightly steel work may be unaccept-

Figure 1. Partial floor plan: circles indicate point of application of short saddles
between existing concrete columns. Triangles show tube columns, all located
approximately in the center of the 28-foot-square bays.

that requires strengtheningtypically a floor slaband steel saddles

are placed between the tendon and
floor at precise locations. The tendons are then tensioned, and they
apply a vertical, upward force to the
bottom of the floor.

The advantages of EPT

Figure 2. Base plate at top of typical

tube column.
tear-down-and-start-over methods
of building repair and retrofit. Pioneered by Seneca Construction Systems Inc., a Canoga Park, California,
engineering-construction firm, the
external post-tensioning (EPT)
method has been successfully applied to repair or retrofit some 30
concrete and steel structures in the
United States.
Ty p i c a l l y, post-tensioning is
applied internally to re i n f o rc e
c o n c rete slabs or beams. Pl a s t i c s l e e ved, 12- i n c h - d i a m e t e r, highs t rength cables, or tendons, are
completely enclosed in the conc rete member when it is first
p o u red. After the concrete cure s,
high tension is applied to the cab l e. Be a ring plates transfer the
tendon tensile force to the conc re t e. The compressed concre t e
can then withstand design loads
without exceeding allowable tensile stresses.
With EPT, tendons are used on
the outside of a steel, concrete, or
wood structure to bolster its
strength. Although the method uses
the same type of tendons as internal
post-tensioning, it requires coring
through concrete walls and
columnsavoiding damage to rebarto attach them. The tendons
are run underneath the member

Although the EPT process is

t ri c k y, it allows the application of
large upward forces at practically
any location in a sagging floor. Its
p ri m a ry purpose is to increase
bending strength, but its secondary
benefits include increased shear
strength and elimination of further
deflection.
When Senecas founders Ken
Bondy and Chris Deetz were asked
to bid on what became their first
EPT project in 1977, neither had
ever done retrofits or repaired sick

buildings. Both, howe ve r, were

structural engineers with extensive
post-tensioning experience.
The first EPT opportunity came in
the form of an apartment building
with a severely cracked and sagging,
reinforced concrete slab supporting
three floors of wood framing. Bondy
and Deetz proposed to run posttensioning cables under the
ground-floor slab, anchor them at
the perimeter walls, and use short
steel saddles between the bottom of
the slab and the cables to generate
upward force.
Since successfully completing
this first EPT job, Seneca has been
engineer-constructor on many
apartment, office, condominium,
hotel, and parking structure repairs
and re t ro f i t s. Many of these structures had been red tagged and were
candidates for demolition.

Figure 3. Section 1 of Figure 1, showing typical east/west truss. The entire posttensioning system is placed between the second-floor slab and the first-floor false
ceiling.

ods, he says.
Since quality
control is so critical to the success
of EPT, Seneca
usually provides
both engineering
and construction
s e rv i c e s.
Even
when construction is performed
by others, as was
the case with a recently completed
Figure 4. Tube column saddle after tendons were strung.
condominium
project,
either
Bondy or Deetz is
always onsite.
There
are
many steps that
must be completed perfectly, like
drilling through
columns, attaching the tendons,
and cable tensioning,
says
Bondy. To make
sure one of us is
able to personally
supervise each of
Figure 5. Short saddle after tendons were strung.
these steps, weve
limited our EPT
Bondy attributes Senecas success
projects to two or three a year.
with EPT to the techniques minimal
disruption to building function and
Luxury condominium retrofit
utilities, lower cost compared with
Construction of a luxury, 15-story
other methods, and faster completion
condominium complex in the Los
times. EPT offers a flexibility thats
Angeles area began in the early
simply not possible with other meth-

Figure 6. Section 2 of Figure 1, showing typical north/south truss. Downward

forces on short steel saddles are taken up by post-tensioning cables passing
through existing concrete columns.

1980s with conventional, reinforced

concrete slabs and columns. After
the building was structurally complete, the developer went bankrupt.
In 1987, the new owner decided
to complete the building and hired
an architect to add more space to
each units layout. The owner approved the new layoutsbut unfortunately, changes in kitchen and
bathroom locations made the exist-

CONSTRUCTION SEQUENCE
The sequence of EPT construction was as follows:
1. Five-inch-diameter holes
were cored through each existing column just below the
second-floor slab, avoiding
all rebar.
2. Holes were cored at the approximate centers of each
floor bay to accommodate
the tubular columns.
3. The tubular columns were
erected.
4. The steel saddles were bolted to the bottom of the second-floor slab.
5. The small tolerance gap between the tubular column
bearing plates and the bottom of the floor slabs was
dry-packed with nonshrink
grout.
6. The tendons in all the bundles were strung, but not
tightened.
7. The tendons were individually tensioned to 25 kips, one
at a time in each successive
bundle, first in the east/west
direction and then in the
north/south direction. This
assured relatively equal tension on each bundle.
8. The exposed tendon bundles were fire protected by
wrapping them with metal
lath and hand applying a
vermiculite plaster to a cover of about 1 12 inches.
9. Gaps around floor holes
were patched, equipment
was removed, and the site
was cleaned.

Unusual EPT
application
Seneca
was
brought in at this
point. After examining the plans
and consulting
with the engineer,
Bondy and Deetz
decided that EPT
could be used to
strengthen the
building per the
engineers specifiFigure 7. Tendon anchor plate bearing on column.
cations. Howe ve r,
minimal headroom between
the bottom of
each floor slab
and the top of the
suspended ceiling was a major
obstacle. There
simply was no
way to place tendons under each
floor to generate
10 kips of upward
force on each bay
without lowe ri n g
the suspended
Figure 8. Tendons and saddles in place just before
ceiling an unacfireproofing
ceptable amount.
Yet the first
floor was 18 feet
ing plumbing chases unusable.
high, and the ceiling space under
To correct the problem, the conthe second-floor slab was about 8
structor would have to core about
feetample space for an EPT sysl,000 holes, up to 6 inches in diametem. Senecas solution was to run 18
ter, through each floor. Since it
tube columns from the second floor
would be prohibitively expensive to
to the roof near the center of each
locate the buried rebar, the engineer
bay (Figure 1), weld bearing plates
required a conservative assumption
to the tube columns underneath
that 2,000 bars (both the top and
each floor (Figure 2), and grout the
bottom layers) would be severed on
space between the plates and floor.
each floor. The engineer also deterSince the tube columns were locatmined that, to restore the original
ed in partition walls as close as posfloor strength, 10 kips (one kip
sible to the center of each bay, no
equals 1,000 pounds) of upward
modifications to the architects
force would need to be concentratplans were required.
ed on the center of each of the 270
floor bays, which measured about
Vertical load,
28 feet square. It was determined
no
physical supports
that the traditional steel-beam soluOnly one challenge remained: to
tion was impractical because it
apply a 150-kip vertical load (10 kips
would severely interfere with
per floor per bay) to the bottom of
planned utilities and result in exceseach tube column without placing
sive cost.

physical supports below the false

ceiling between the first and second
floors. This was accomplished by
placing the entire post-tensioning
system between the second-floor
slab and the first-floor false ceiling,
as shown in Figure 3, an east/west
section. The tube columns are supported at their lower ends by steel
saddles with bundles of eight tendons running under welded-on
pipe sections (Figure 4). Be t we e n
each set of tube columns underneath the second floor are short
steel saddles, each with tendons
above and below it (Figure 5).
Figure 6 (a north/south cross section at the second floor) shows how
the downward forces on the short
steel saddles are taken up. The
building is three bays wide, so there
are three short saddles lined up with
the existing re i n f o rc e d - c o n c re t e
columns. Bundles of eight tendons
are attached to the two outside
columns via bearing plates (Figure
7). These tendons run under each
saddle and through holes cored at
the top of each column under the
second floor.
The tensioning of each bundle to
200 kips (25 kips per cable) results in
a small, residual 3-kip upward force
at each of the short saddles and a
150-kip upward force at the bottom
of each tube column. Fully tensioned, the EPT system provides a
total upward force of about 2.7 million pounds to the building floor
slab. At the same time, it adds virtually no weight to the building.
K a ren J. Barchas is a fre e l a n c e
writer in San Rafael, CA.
Acknowledgement
This reprinted article originally
appeared in the February 1991 issue
of Ab e rd e e ns Concrete Repair Digest.

Publication # C910536
Copyright 1991, The Aberdeen
Group. All rights reserved