Monolithic walls are growing

With the efforts of Nikolai Kudryavtsev’s site from SMU-9, underground monolithic walls are being erected on the square between the Rizhsky Station and Mira Avenue. By the beginning of May, reinforced concrete structures more than thirty meters high were ready at approximately 20 percent of their designed length. But... only the builders themselves know about this, since the walls grow underground - in trenches of the appropriate depth. A Metrostroyevts correspondent observed a process invisible to ordinary Muscovites.

Builders are using modern technologies to build a fence for the foundation pit of the future vestibule of the Rzhevskaya station under construction. Muscovites from the outside, even from the Riga overpass, can only see cranes, excavator-grabs and four blue containers for the clay mixing unit. In plan, the lobby is an elongated polygon. And the “wall in the ground” forms such a figure. This is explained by the location of the construction site. Within its boundaries there are many underground communications, some of which are too difficult or impossible to move, while the rest still change their route. The work is supervised by the deputy head of the site, Vladimir Shamalo. He came to Mosmetrostroy in 2009 after graduating from MIIT. As a mining foreman, he worked at many sites, the most recent being “Maryina Roshcha”, “Troparevo”, “Seligerskaya”, “Verkhnie Likhobory”. The pit of the installation chamber behind Seligerskaya was remembered for the fact that it was the farthest point of advance of the Lyublinsko-Dmitrovskaya line to the north. And at the second exit of the previous station, even the relative proximity to Likhoborka was felt because of the quicksand. But now, from the point of view of hydrogeological conditions, the Rzhevskaya lobby does not cause much trouble:

– We mostly go through sandy loam with layers of clay. This is a typical combination for the Moscow subsoil,” states Shamalo. – Quicksand also appears, but we hold it back with bentonite.

The new facility seems to have no special features, but in the engineer’s work history, the Rzhevskaya lobby will still occupy a prominent place - it was in connection with the planned relocation of part of the team here that Vladimir Aleksandrovich was appointed deputy head of the site. And now he notes with satisfaction the presence in the general working ranks of experienced excavator workers Nikolai Kalyamin, Yuri Pechagin, Vladimir Kravets, awarded with city awards.

Work on the “wall in the ground” is carried out around the clock and with two grabs. Reinforcement frames for the next stops are supplied uninterruptedly from the SMU-9 base on Gazgoldernaya Street. So the underground walls are growing. Some complications arose with the removal of soil. But the spring thaw has passed, and there was even a stock of frames on the site.