Capability

Chocking, Grouting & Alignment

Precision machinery chocking, baseplate grouting, soleplate setting, and load-bearing shims for rotating and reciprocating equipment.

Overview

What Chocking & Grouting involves

BHI Coatings crews perform chocking, grouting & alignment work for industrial plants in Alvin and across the Texas Gulf Coast.

When a pump drifts out of alignment or a machine base sits on voids, the vibration that follows shortens bearing life, loosens hold-down bolts, and walks the whole train toward an unplanned outage. The usual fix is steel shims, but steel only touches at the high spots. That point contact runs the load through a few square inches, fatigues the metal, and lets the equipment creep out of position under load.

Spalled concrete column base on a plinth with a pale epoxy haunch cast around the foot of the column

We set and bed rotating and reciprocating equipment with cold-cure chocking and grouting compounds poured in place. The compound flows into every void and irregularity, then cures hard and dimensionally stable. Load transfers across the full footprint, alignment holds, and none of it requires machining the foundation or the host structure. As factory-trained and factory-certified Belzona applicators serving the Gulf Coast refiners, petrochemical producers, and marine operators, we bring the machine into full, even contact and keep it there through physical and thermal cycling.

Machine bases, pump skids, and soleplates

Voids, distortion, and gaps under machine feet and pump bases feed vibration and misalignment straight back into the rotating equipment. Once a base loses solid support, bolts work loose, the casing distorts, and the bearings pay for it.

Grinding or machining the foundation flat is slow and costly, and on equipment that has to stay put it is often not possible at all.

We pour a cold-cure chocking compound that spreads across irregular concrete or steel and beds the base across its full area. The Belzona 7000 Series compound we use sets with very little shrinkage and carries high compressive load, so the equipment holds alignment without re-machining the foundation.

Skids and soleplates get grouted the same way. The base is sitting in stable, even contact before the unit is ever recommissioned.

Shims, reseating, and electrical isolation

Steel shims leave point contact under machine feet. Load transfers unevenly and the equipment drifts out of alignment as it runs, and stacking more steel makes the contact problem worse rather than better. Where a foot also needs electrical isolation, a metal shim defeats the purpose entirely.

We form load-bearing shims cast to match the actual mating surface, so the shim contacts the foot across its whole face. Where a bearing housing or motor foot has to be electrically isolated from its base, we pour load-bearing insulating shims the same way.

The reseated equipment holds precise alignment through physical and thermal cycling, and the shim carries its share of the load instead of biting into a single high spot.

Crane rails, wear plates, and pipe supports

Heavy support structures fail the same way machine feet do. Steel shimming under a crane rail leaves point contact that fatigues the rail and the structure beneath it under wheel loads measured in tons.

Wear plates and bars seated on irregular backing distort quickly, because the steel shim under them only touches in spots. And pipes sliding across bare steel supports grind through their coatings, trap moisture, and corrode at every contact point.

We handle all three from the same chair. A cold-cure compound beds a crane rail across its full contact area and damps shock, so the track carries heavy-lift loads with no machining of the support.

The same approach fills the gap behind a wear plate and seats it flat against its backing. For pipe shoes, we apply a low-friction liner that lets the line move freely, isolates the contact face, and sheds water so the pipe coating survives thermal cycling.

What the unit gets back

Every repair here happens in place, with no hot work and no foundation machining, which keeps adjacent equipment in service. It also takes the welding permit, the fire watch, and the grinding cleanup off the job entirely.

The unit goes back into service bedded across its full footprint rather than balanced on a few high spots.

What the maintenance buyer cares about is asset life and uptime. Even load transfer holds alignment, which protects bearings, seals, and couplings and stretches the interval between overhauls. Rails, wear plates, and pipe supports stop fatiguing their host structures and last longer for it.

With around-the-clock on-call coverage across the Texas Gulf Coast, BHI Coatings can pour, cure, and set a base inside a turnaround window and have the equipment running again on schedule.

The work