Outlying rural areas are often confronted with major inconveniences when severe storms or the rainy season comes around. Roads become flooded, bridges submerge under water or are completely washed away, cutting off communities from food supplies and essential services. Ga-Diboye Village, near Kuruman in the Northern Cape is such a location. Rocla recently supplied Rectangular Portal (RP) culverts and bases and the link slabs to ensure that the stormwater was effectively dispersed without cutting of the Ga-Diboye Village community from its school and shops.

Rocla Sales Consultant, Dillon Carter, said “The Ga-Diboye Village project required RP culverts measuring 3600mm x 3000mm with RP bases of 3600mm. Rocla is the only company that manufactures RP culverts of this size and we manufactured 32 for this particular project”.

“The installation is unique, and a first in terms of bridge design in South Africa, in so much that four rows of eight culverts in length were installed in a culvert-link-culvert-link formation” said Carter. Bolts and anchor grout were required to secure the slabs to the culverts and were supplied by Rocla and Technicrete Mining Division, as well as a crane, which was hired by South 32 Mine, the project investor, to offload the culverts at site.

“An integral part of this culvert project was the 24 3600mm link slabs that we supplied which were crucial to the formation of the culverts for this particular application. The style of the formation was not unsimilar to a truck and trailer concept” said Carter.

Rocla’s pre-cast concrete RP Culverts are recommended for use in stormwater applications, they provide a waterway underneath road. The unit consists of a deck and two legs and placed on a concrete base. The RP Culverts have also been used at railway tracks, mine tunnels and also can be inverted as a drainage ditch.

The culverts are normally supplied in 1,22m lengths and in 50S, 75S and 100S strength classes, but custom-made designs can be manufactured as they were for the Ga-Diboye Village project.

Special intermediate strengths or heavier loading requirements can be designed and manufactured but would be subject to various material constraints and would need evaluation by our engineers on an ad hoc basis.

“One can easily forget about the sometimes, dire situations our communities find themselves in outside of our main city centres, but we believe that our culverts and associated components will make a tremendous difference to the Ga-Diboye community once the rainy season commences” concluded Carter.

Rocla is part of the ISG which also includes Technicrete.