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Delivery and Installation of Pilings
It was really hard to get the truck in here. The
pilings were only 22 ft long but the trailer bed was 52 ft. long PLUS the truck
had a sleeper cab !! It took a zillion mini-turns to get this around the street
turn-offs. One tree was clipped.
This heavily engineered house has beefed up foundation,
pilings, piling caps, thick slab, etc..
Anil Badve was our structural engineer and he did
the drawings for the base of the house. Anil Badve ordered a soil test
before we did anything. Soil testing revealed that we have very dense sand, an
almost ideal sub-surface. We considered not using any pilings but after the
recent storm surges along the Gulf Coast, we discussed w/ Anil what could
happen. Planning for a Cat 4 hurricane, we looked for 12 in dia., 15 ft long
pilings but were unable to find that size. We did find 10" dia. pilings and
our engineer said we could use them but we'd have to go 20 ft. deep. We will
still evacuate is a storm is headed our way, but we think we will have a home to
come back to. We don't plan to insure it because we think that with our
foundation system and the strength of the DAC-ART blocks, along with impact
glass in all windows and doors, we have very little to worry about..
The survey people, Lucindoor and Oliver, came out
and established where the corners of the house were going to be. They use a GPS
system and they know the footprint of the house. They can rotate the house
location to save as many trees as possible, best view and things like that. Once
everyone is happy with the results, they stake all of the corners. Next they
refer to the piling diagram, supplied by the structural engineer, and mark where
each piling should be placed.
The piling installers are specialists. Getting
the pilings in the ground is a multi-step process. They ran close to 600 ft of
hose just like fire hose to a tanker truck. The tank is able to apply tremendous
pressure to the water which comes out of a long metal pipe that two men hold
vertically in the exact spot where the piling is to go. The piling is held above
vertically by a tractor w/ special apparatus that holds the pole suspended above
the hole it is to go into. The force of the pressurized water creates a starter
hole into which the piling is placed. After that a pile-driver is used to pound
the pole into the sand/ground.
Photos by Jerry Nasello
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05/16/2011
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