The mayor of La Laguna, Luis Yeray Gutiérrez, announced yesterday that the City Council will allocate almost 30 million euros for the rehabilitation of 150 blocks of the El Cardonal urbanization. This was advanced in the urbanization itself together with the CEO of Muvisa, Ignacio Viciana, and the technical architect of the entity, Antonio Pérez.
This action, through Muvisa, will make it possible to repair deteriorated structural elements in the blocks, due to the presence of aluminous cement in the joists that, in contact with moisture, “changes their internal structure and the reinforcements rust, and that is a risk and these joists must be repaired ”, explained Antonio Pérez.
This problem was already detected in the previous mandate during the course of some works, and it was decided to commission an inspection study of the structure of all the blocks, although the previous local government ceased without actually entrusting it to Muvisa, a matter that the current one took up. Government team.
From the report already carried out, it can be deduced that in 150 blocks, joists with aluminous cement were used. “Tastings, trials were carried out and there is an analysis of each of these blocks, and from there we will proceed with different mechanisms to rehabilitate them,” explained Antonio Pérez, who highlighted that the reports “say that there is no risk that this is going to cause a collapse, but it does say that we must act and repair it ”.
In this regard, the technical architect explained that “all issues that can produce moisture in the structure must be avoided: downspouts that have leaks are changed, the water pipes that are inside are taken to the outside and the joists are reinforced. structurally or repaired ”.
At the same time, while the tastings were being carried out for this study, “the precautionary measures that the technical inspectors were checking were adopted, and if they saw that any joist had a corrosion problem, they reported it to the Urban Planning Management, which issued orders for execution and it was repaired ”, added Pérez.
Viciana pointed out that “I estimate that in March of next year we will already be starting with 35 blocks”, which already have the projects, “and from there in a staggered manner”, so she calculated that “in the next 3-4 years they will be working on El Cardonal ”. Residents will remain in their homes while the works are carried out.
The announced investment leaves out another 18 blocks, which will be worked on once these 150 are completed, since, “according to the report, they have not used joists with aluminous cement, although there are also other pathologies that must be corrected” Viciana pointed out.
These almost 30 million come from municipal, island, regional, state and European financing, through different plans, together with a minimum economic participation of the neighborhood communities, as they explained. “The agreements that we have from the City Council with other institutions, we have decided to centralize them in El Cardonal and respond to the neighbors,” said the mayor, who stressed that “thanks to this intervention, we are going to guarantee the stability and rehabilitation of all buildings ”.
Gutiérrez and Viciana explained that, once the COVID measures allowed it, they have been meeting with the presidents of the blocks to explain the situation.
Asked whether aluminosis has been detected in any block, the Muvisa technical architect stated that “no, the reports do not speak of aluminosis but of joists with aluminous cement.” “One thing is aluminosis and another thing is that the joists are made of aluminous cement. There is no risk of collapse, what there is is joists with aluminous cement that must be repaired ”, he emphasized.
“We are not, and we can guarantee it, before a Chumberas II, and I want to reiterate and underline it,” said the councilor.
