Silbury Hill forum 180 room
Image by Littlestone
Silbury Hill

Silbury Round One lock

close
more_vert

I never have understood what is meant by "grouting". That's what I do after fixing bathroom tiles. It just seems a bit temporary - don't we want a permanent solution?

Grouting is pumping in a rock paste of some sort. 99.9% of stabilisation is done that way. Prof Chandler said it would be viable here except for a single concern he had - about the introduction of water, albeit temporarily.

Slurry grouting - the engineer actually said no-one can predict what might happen if a slurry containing water was introduced into a 4000+ year old dry environment. One of the implications being that slurry might destabilise the structure.

Pressure grouting - rejected on the grounds that it was only normally done when you'd already created a sufficiently stable and strong structure.

With either method what you could not ensure was that all the voids would be filled.