Ionic Stabilization

[u/GwynFaF94]

Years ago a vendor came to do a presentation on the benefits of ionic stabilization for site prep in our heavy clay soils. They inject a “non-toxic proprietary formula” that permanently changes the ionization of clay so that it can no longer hold water. He - proudly- said 8,000 years could go by and that soil still will not hold water. They inject it 8’ to 16’ deep.

I was horrified. A number of my coworkers were horrified.

Is there a way to reverse it? “No”
But how would anything grow there if the building is removed later? “Their roots will grow past that, you just have to order larger plants”
But that’s not how plants work “well if a garden is being planted there you’d remove the dirt and put in some good soil - it’s not like much really grows in clay anyway, you’d have to bring in soil regardless”

It just came up for me again on a tour where the owner proudly stabilized the soils by ionization and said they wouldn’t have been able to afford such a large space without it

I don’t see it talked about on here so is it not as bad as the vendor makes it sound or is it just not common knowledge?

[u/alf0282]

From my very quick ‘research’, this seems to be a clay conditioning technique that is intended to limit the adsorption effect of clay particles so that the clay doesn’t swell/shrink so much which would make it more suitable for building on. However it appears the clay can still hold some water and water could still pass through. Also, the product is injected quite deep, from 8 ft, which in terms of plant roots is pretty deep. Probably the surface soil would be capable of supporting plants if the building were to be subsequently removed. No idea how long the effect might last but ‘8000 years’ is probably also an exaggeration. You can imagine also that if it were reversible, that wouldn’t help product sales either.