Take your best shot! Creative Uses Of Shotcrete

While swimming pools and road construction projects have been the mainstay of many contractors in the shotcrete industry, a number of shotcrete artists are taking the concrete medium to new levels of creativity and usefulness.

Shotcrete is very versatile. It has many decorative uses: artificial rock work, faux trees and much more. “Shotcrete gives you the opportunity for options,” says David Long, president of Lakeland Co. in Rathdrum, Idaho. “It’s endless what you can do with it.”

Long and his peers have carved a distinct niche: decorative applications of shotcrete. Museums, zoos, aquariums, theme parks and resorts often make extensive use of decorative shotcrete to create wildlife habitats or realistic-looking environments where using the real thing would be a challenge or impossible, such as in the case of massive boulders.

Stephen Dodson, director of rock work at The Nassal Co. of Orlando, Fla., reports there is a decline in the desire for themed environments, such as themed restaurants and retailers, because there is a feeling those facilities were overbuilt, but there is a demand for new amenities and large-scale environments. For example, he says, his company recently finished the addition of a river amenity on Grand Cayman Island. “We used over 2,700 cubic yards of shotcrete to make a river — really a huge pool — where there are fish you can swim with. And an adjacent pool with sharks is separated only by a clear acrylic wall, so it is like you are swimming with sharks.”
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