Bowing Cinder Block | Chicago, IL | Stablwall | Carbon-Fiber Structural Strengthening System

Carbon Fiber Foundation Crack Repair Carbon fiber is made through a complex process involving high heat that rearranges molecules. It also requires sophisticated equipment. For years, carbon fiber was just too expensive to produce to be viable for anything but the most critical applications, like space shuttles, airplane wings, and repairs of bridges and commercial concrete structures. But more recently, more reasonable production costs and its incredible strength have opened the door to a host of new applications – and we’re seeing more and more carbon fiber-based products in hundreds of everyday uses. StablWall is designed around the same concepts used in heavy industrial settings – the sheets are wider, and cover more area than other carbon fiber products on the market today – the benefit to you is more coverage and better strength! StablWall uses technology to help you feel confident about the strength of your foundation, StablWall uses carbon fiber technology to strengthen basement walls and concrete structures. For the first time, homeowners and residential contractors can benefit from carbon fiber’s strength – until recently, carbon fiber was only available to commercial or government contractors. StablWall consists of carbon fiber sheets. Those sheets consist of thousands of strands linked together and running in the same direction. When those sheets are bonded to a concrete structure, they add tremendous strength to that structure. The StablWall System also consists of specially engineered epoxies that bond the carbon fibers to a concrete wall or structure. Once bonded, the wall becomes significantly stronger than it was before – thereby eliminating the worry of additional cracking or bowing or a Bowed Cinder Block, which can be a sign of structural integrity failure. Better yet, the StablWall system does not detract from the look or amount of space you have to work with. Facts About Chicago, IL Chicago’s critical location on the water route linking the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River shaped much of its early history. It was populated by a series of native tribes who maintained villages in the forested areas near rivers. Beginning with Father Jacques Marquette and French Canadian explorer Louis Jolliet in 1673, a steady stream of explorers and missionaries passed through or settled in the region, but it was not until 1779 that the first nonnative resident made it his permanent home: Jean-Baptist-Point Du Sable maintained a thriving trading post near the mouth of the Chicago River until 1800, when he moved out of the region. Within a few years the federal government had erected Fort Dearborn to establish a military presence in the area. The garrison was located on the south bank at the river mouth; it was destroyed during the War of 1812 but was rebuilt in 1816. By that time, numerous traders linked the region with international fur markets. Even after Illinois became a state in 1818, however, Chicago remained a small settlement. It was incorporated as a town in 1833 with a population of about 350. Population growth remained stagnant until the federal government allocated funding that allowed work to begin on the Illinois and Michigan Canal, a vital link between Lake Michigan and the Illinois River. Because the project was to be financed largely by sales of adjacent land, which would benefit from the commerce it brought, the canal helped to fill Chicago with speculators. The boom led to a second incorporation, this time as a city, on March 4, 1837; the population was 4,170. That same year a devastating national economic depression delayed the city’s development for several years. Canal construction drew thousands of Irish labourers to the area, when what was supposed to be a simple ditch a few hundred yards long grew into a waterway of some 75 miles (120 km), often cut through solid rock. After the canal opened in 1848, it brought grain and other raw materials to the city, while providing what was then a fast and convenient means of travel to the interior of the state. Emergence as a transportation hub Chicago’s railway age also began in 1848, when a locomotive named the Pioneer arrived by ship from Buffalo, New York, and went into service for the new Galena and Chicago Union Railroad. The line’s 11-mile (18-km) track extended straight west from the city, but its namesake destination, the lead-mining metropolis in the northwest corner of the state, declined in importance before extensions even reached it. Other lines soon extended to the west, including the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy, the Rock Island, and the Illinois Central. The Chicago and Milwaukee line linked the rival ports by rail. In 1852 two separate lines entered from the east and provided direct rail service to the Eastern Seaboard. By the beginning of the 20th century, no fewer than 30 interstate routes fanned out from the city, and the resulting ease in reaching both raw materials and markets contributed to the city’s rapid commercial and industrial development. Most important of all, Chicago was the terminus of every one of the railroads; passengers, raw materials, and finished goods all had to be transferred between lines in the city, thus contributing to an extraordinary development of hotels, restaurants, taxicabs, warehouses, rail yards, and trucking companies. The railroad, along with the telegraph, the grain elevator, agricultural newspapers, and the trading floor of the Chicago Board of Trade, facilitated the collection of commodities from the farm belt, which was rapidly developing to the west. The city soon became the focal point of a “golden funnel” that collected and processed grain, lumber, and meat and then sent them to markets in the eastern United States and Europe. Trade encouraged ancillary industries such as the manufacture of steel rails and railroad equipment, shipbuilding, packaging, and printing, as well as the development of hotels and restaurant facilities. However, nothing at that time personified Chicago industry more than meatpacking and the vast Union Stock Yards on the city’s Near Southwest Side. Conflagration and rebirth Chicago’s growth was unprecedented. The population reached nearly 30,000 in 1850 and was triple that a decade later. Cheap transportation to the outskirts of the city encouraged middle-class dispersal, but poor neighbourhoods near the downtown area were congested; structures there were also built of wood. Serious fires were frequent, but no one could have anticipated the events of the evening of October 8, 1871. Months without rain had parched the city, and a major fire the previous night had exhausted firefighters and damaged equipment. It is not known what happened in the De Koven Street barn of Patrick and Catherine O’Leary, on the city’s West Side. Vandals, milk thieves, a drunken neighbour, spontaneous combustion, even (though unlikely) the O’Learys’ legendary cow—any could have started a blaze there that roared out of control in minutes. Misdirected fire equipment arrived too late, and a steady wind from the southwest carried the flames and blazing debris from block to block. The slums became kindling for the downtown conflagration, where even the supposedly fireproof stone and brick buildings exploded in flames as the destruction swept northward. Only rainfall, the lake, and stretches of unbuilt lots on the North Side finally halted the wave of destruction a full day after it started. The most famous fire in American history claimed about 300 lives, destroyed some 17,450 buildings covering almost 3.5 square miles (9 square km), and caused $200 million in damage. Roughly one-third of the city lay in ruins, and an equal proportion of the population—nearly 100,000 people—was homeless. Chicago rebuilt quickly, reached more than a half million residents in 1880, and accomplished construction miracles. As a response to public health concerns, the newly formed Sanitary District of Metropolitan Chicago began work in 1889 on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, the waterway that when opened in 1900 not only allowed larger vessels to pass through the port of Chicago but also made it possible to reverse the flow of the Chicago River; the improvement in public health once pollutants were carried away from Lake Michigan was dramatic. Meanwhile, a host of talented architects that included Louis Sullivan, Dankmar Adler, William Holabird, Daniel H. Burnham, John Wellborn Root, and William Le Baron Jenney, who had been attracted to Chicago by the postfire rebuilding opportunities, stayed on in the 1880s to design a new generation of even taller downtown buildings. Department stores and offices crowded into the central area, and industrial growth along the river branches and rail lines was equally phenomenal. Commuter railroads and transit improvements promoted outward residential dispersal of the middle class, a clientele served by a young Frank Lloyd Wright and the emerging “Prairie school” architects. This suburban boom prompted the city to annex some 125 square miles (324 square km) in 1889, which included many adjacent communities and also much open farmland.