Concrete scanning and GPR in Gatineau

How Gatineau’s building stock shapes your concrete surveys

Downtown Gatineau, in the Hull sector, still bears the mark of the Great Fire of April 26, 1900. According to the Répertoire du patrimoine culturel du Québec, the fire destroyed half of Hull and part of Ottawa, some 1,300 buildings, after which the City of Hull strictly enforced the by-law banning wooden buildings on major streets. Between 1880 and 1933, Hull went through eight major fires. The Kent-Aubry-Wright heritage site therefore gathers mostly buildings from the rebuilding, in red brick and wood, including many “matchbox houses” with a front-facing gable.

Industry shaped this landscape. The E.-B.-Eddy buildings, erected in stone from 1883 onward after a fire in 1882, recall a company that moved from matches to paper, and the Répertoire links the post-1900 rebuilding to growth driven by electricity generation and pulp and paper.

Another era is layered on top. According to Public Services and Procurement Canada, the Place du Portage complex groups federal buildings built between the 1970s and the early 1980s, covering 447,000 m² over five phases and occupied by more than 10,000 employees. Portage III, built between 1973 and 1978, includes office towers, retail areas in the basements and an underground parking garage. It is undergoing a mid-life renewal because its base building systems have reached the end of their useful life.

Replacing plumbing, electrical, heating and cooling systems in 1970s federal towers often brings new penetrations through the slabs. In a building of that generation, ask which original drawings and records of alterations exist, then treat them as assumptions to be confirmed: four or five decades of refits may have added conduits or reinforcement that do not appear on them.

In the old core, a slab poured during the conversion of a brick or wood building from the rebuilding does not present itself like a tower slab. State the type of floor and the period of any known work.