Summary

This review describes the use of grout in mining, including a review of the history of grouting, the use of grouting in mining situations to control subsidence, to provide for groundwater protection, to enhance the installation and functionality of roof and rock bolts and anchors, and to compliment shaft sinking operations. In this review we list and describe specialists in mine-related grouting, the design and specification of grouting programs, grout testing, grouting injection, and books and technical papers on the topic of grouting.

---

INTRODUCTION

This slim piece is the result of many hours scouring the byways of the web. I hope it saves you time and gives you a fast introduction to a technology that is key to many a successful mining operation. If you have more information, know of better sites, or can add to this, please pass it on and I will include your contributions in the next update.

HISTORY

In Middle English, before the French speaking Normans imposed their tongue on the Anglo-Saxons, grut was coarse meal, the grain used to make malt. I do not know how grut referring to grain transferred to grout as we use the word. I wonder if there is a link to the modern word grit (minute rough granules) from the Middle English gret = sand, from the Old English greot. Of course there is ground in modern English and grond in Dutch, with ground coming from the Old English grund. That gr-sound keeps us grounded. Maybe as the current theory goes, some influential, but probably mistaken, speaker used the word thus and thus it is.

I worked with Ken Weaver on a million dollar grout curtain for the embankment of the Cannon Mine tailings impoundment. Here is what he writes of the history of grouting:

The history of dam foundation grouting in the U.S., which began with a project in New York in the late nineteenth century, is-to some extent-one of objectives not fully achieved. It also is one of innovative procedures and insightful ideas only some of which were applied, and of questionable procedures that look all too familiar to today's grouting practitioners. An early suggestion that a closely adjacent two-row grout curtain consisting of closely-spaced grout holes might be preferable to a three-row curtain clearly was not incorporated in the design of Teton Dam, but has been incorporated in the design of a few dams constructed in recent years. The early twentieth century concept of injecting essentially endless volumes of high water/cement ratio grouts survived unto the late twentieth century, despite a realization in some quarters that such grout would travel far beyond the area requiring treatment and would either not set up at all or would merely form 'films.' By the time Boulder Dam was constructed, the design of grouting programs was considered to have became 'systematic.' However, in this case, remedial grouting entailing deepening the curtain and injecting very substantial volumes of grout subsequently was found to be necessary. There have since been many other cases in which the initial grouting was done 'systematically' (using now outmoded concepts and procedures) and in which remedial grouting ultimately proved to be required.