Perma-Zyme is a powerful enzyme soil stabilizer that lasts for 10+ years on county roads and up to five years for heavy industrial projects with one application and little to no maintenance. It’s also 100% natural and eco-friendly.
Since Perma-Zyme works best with certain soils, it's smart to evaluate your soil before you apply it. That's why we offer complimentary soil evaluations to our customers. We’ll check the particle size distribution and plasticity to determine how well your soil will work, treat a sample with Perma-Zyme, and tell you how you can improve its compatibility if necessary.
In this blog, we’ll share who’s eligible and why we recommend taking advantage of our free #200 Finder Soil Evaluation. Then, we’ll dive into how it works. Let’s get started!
We want to analyze soil for every customer, but we have two limitations.
So, what if you’re an international customer or a homeowner in the U.S.? Don’t worry! Simply contact us and ask for your at-home soil evaluation kit. It contains everything you need to check your soil’s compatibility. And it’s still free; we’ll even pay for shipping. Once you complete the evaluation, we’re happy to discuss your results and any soil amendments you may need.
Most projects require soil stabilization to make the earth strong enough to support the infrastructure you’re building, and soil evaluations help you know exactly how to do that. So, analyzing your soil is crucial to successful construction, whether you’re using Perma-Zyme or another product.
For Perma-Zyme, we recommend evaluating your soil with us for three reasons:
Perma-Zyme works best with soils that contain clay, limestone, or decomposed granite (DCG). How much of these materials your soil contains and how much you need will vary depending on your location and project. Your soil should also contain enough coarse material to provide adequate shear strength for the structure you’re building.
Identifying soil’s composition with the naked eye is almost impossible since many soil particles are microscopic. Soil content also varies between locations—even within the same county or jobsite. So, evaluations are essential to knowing what your soil contains and how it’ll interact with Perma-Zyme. And since we make Perma-Zyme, we’re well-qualified to identify soils that will work with it.
With a soil evaluation, you’re more likely to apply Perma-Zyme successfully, save time and money during construction, and achieve long-lasting stabilization. That’s because you’ll get a comprehensive soil report with your results, and we’ll suggest amendments to increase your soil’s Perma-Zyme compatibility if you need them. This vital information helps you plan ahead and prevent problems. It also makes purchase approvals faster and easier.
If you forgo the soil evaluation, you may accidentally apply Perma-Zyme to incompatible soil, costing you more time and money. You don’t want that, and neither do we! We want you to be successful from day one.
Hiring a geotechnical firm to evaluate your soil can be expensive and take weeks. Plus, most labs are too far from rural areas to be practical.
As we’ve mentioned, our soil evaluation is free. That’s right: Zero. Zip. Goose egg. We’ll even send you all the supplies you need to collect your soil samples, and we’ll pay to ship them back to our lab. From there, we typically take less than a week to analyze your soil and report the results.
Our soil evaluation contains three parts: a sieve analysis, an Atterberg limits test, and a Perma-Zyme treatment. We follow ASTM guidelines for the sieve and Atterberg tests and our own product experience for the Perma-Zyme treatment. Let’s cover each one in more detail.
A sieve analysis reveals your soil’s particle size distribution—in other words, what percent of your soil’s grains are what size. Since the four main soil types (gravel, sand, silt, and clay) are all different sizes, this helps us determine what soils are present on your project.
To perform this test, lab technicians stack multiple sieves in a tower with the largest mesh on top and smallest mesh on bottom. Next, the techs put the stack into a machine called a sieve shaker and add the soil at the top. The sieve shaker vibrates vigorously for several minutes, so the smaller particles fall through the mesh to the lower sieves, while the larger particles stay closer to the top.
By looking at the soil on each sieve, we can identify what percentage of the soil is what size, aka its particle size distribution. For example, we might find that 25% of the soil is gravel that stopped on the #4 sieve and 75% is fine-grained soil that passed through the #200 sieve.
The #200 sieve is the smallest size we use (hence why we call our analysis the #200 Finder Soil Evaluation.). It has fine mesh spaced 0.075 millimeters apart, so only tiny soil particles can pass through it. That means any soil passing the #200 sieve is either clay (the smallest type at 0.002 millimeters) or silt (the second smallest at 0.05 millimeters).
Of those, clay is compatible with Perma-Zyme, but silt is not. To determine which soil your sample contains, we turn to the Atterberg limits test.
Soil’s consistency varies based on its water content, so it can appear in one of four states: solid, semi-solid, plastic, and liquid. In 1911, a Swedish chemist and agricultural researcher named Albert Atterberg defined these states and the limits at which soil moves from one to another. (Now you know why it’s called the Atterberg limits test!)
When we check your soil’s Atterberg limits, we look for high plasticity. Plastic soil can change shape without cracking, making it easy to compact. Perma-Zyme depends on good compaction to push the soil particles as close together as possible so the enzymes can bind them tightly for maximum strength and durability.
Plastic is the second wettest soil state, right after liquid. So, clay is generally the most plastic soil because it retains the most water. The Atterberg test measures this water content with a plasticity index that tells us the difference between soil’s liquid limit and its plastic limit. By finding each of these limits, we can then know how much water soil can contain and still remain in its plastic state.
First, lab technicians mix a portion of the soil’s fine-grained particles with water to achieve a peanut buttery consistency. They place the mixture in a metal cup affixed to an Atterberg testing device and draw a 13-millimeter groove down the middle. Then, the machine strikes the cup 15 to 30 times.
When the soil collapses into the groove, it has reached its liquid limit—when it’s too wet to remain plastic. The more strikes the soil can tolerate before it collapses, the more plastic it is. From there, technicians calculate the soil’s moisture content at its liquid limit.
Lab techs spread a moistened soil sample onto a glass plate. They then use their hands and a thin, metal bar to roll the soil into a ribbon three millimeters thick. Highly plastic soil can take this shape. But if the soil’s plasticity is too low, it’ll break before it hits the three millimeter mark. Non-plastic soil won’t roll at all. So, finding the plastic limit tells the techs when the soil is too dry to be plastic.
A high score on your soil’s plastic and liquid limits indicates that your soil likely contains sufficient clay to work well with Perma-Zyme. Generally, we recommend that the plastic limit score be 7% or more, but this may vary by project.
We treat some of your soil with Perma-Zyme, shape it into a puck (similar to a hockey puck), and let it dry. If it contains clay, limestone, or DCG, the puck will harden and won’t be easy to break—although our lab crew has fun trying! When your puck survives our break tests, we’ll ship it to you so you can see and feel Perma-Zyme’s effects for yourself.
Creating the Perma-Zyme puck is crucial because some low-plasticity soils that score poorly on the Atterberg limits test do contain limestone or DCG. These minerals are non-plastic, yet still highly Perma-Zyme compatible. So, the puck helps us detect them. It also helps us predict how your soil should perform on the jobsite when you apply Perma-Zyme.
Most soils contain a mix of clay, silt, sand, and other minerals, so the chances of your soil being totally incompatible with Perma-Zyme are low. That said, some soils in their natural state are less compatible than others. If that’s the case, don’t worry. You can still use your soil!
You’ll simply need to amend it by adding compatible material. There’s no excavating or exporting required. When you receive your soil evaluation report, we’ll give you tailored recommendations based on your project, and we’ll help you weigh your options to find the most effective, affordable solution in your area.
Now, soil amendments do increase the upfront cost of Perma-Zyme because you must import compatible material. But, that’s not as worrisome as you might think. Customers who amended their soil found that Perma-Zyme was still more cost-effective than other stabilizers because it minimized their maintenance costs for years after application.
We do our best to make the #200 Finder Soil Evaluation easy for our customers. Here’s how it works:
The #200 Finder Soil Evaluation uses a sieve analysis, Atterberg limits test, and Perma-Zyme treated puck to determine your soil’s particle size distribution, plasticity, and level of Perma-Zyme compatibility. We’ll also give you tailored recommendations for amendments that could make your soil even more effective.
This soil evaluation is completely free for U.S.-based public and private commercial customers. It will help you make the most of your Perma-Zyme application so you can enjoy long-lasting, low-maintenance soil stabilization.
Are you an international customer or U.S.-based homeowner? Request your free soil assessment kit here.
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