As the song goes “Winding your way down on Baker Street, light in your head and dead on your feet. Well another crazy day” … in the exciting world of Eco Foundations Limited.
Eco have just completed a virtually silent and vibration-free steel pile-pressing contract for McAleer and Rushe Limited, at 2-14 Baker Street, London. The contract was awarded to the piling specialist due to the innovative piling solution offered to the Northern Irish contractor.
The project consisted of an 18m run of sheet piles to temporarily retain up to about 2.8m whilst the principle contractor excavated the site for a new basement. As with many city centre sites, the retaining wall was positioned immediately adjacent to the edge of the site. Due to other site operations Eco was only given a working area of 20m by 6m in which to work. The small working area, together with an existing lamp-post just 150mm from the face of the piles made piling plant selection the main criterion for awarding the sub-contract.
Eco’s initial offer was to install the piles with one of their Giken UP-150 silent and vibration-free piling rigs. However, as the site as so constricted and the lamp-post could not be removed Eco had to offer an alternative solution, - the RTG Rig-mounted Press. The rig mounted press hydraulically drives the piles in panels of 4 into the ground with virtually no noise and vibration.
The piles are initially stood up using the leader rig and the crowd force from the leader and piling hammer. A very small quantity of vibration is used to penetrate the sheets so that they become self supporting in the soil. Once the piles were stood up the press was manoeuvred over the sheets and the piles driven to level in a smooth and controlled operation of up to 420mm per stroke of the press.
The contract was awarded on a Thursday. The rig was delivered to site the following Tuesday evening and the work completed in just 3 days clearing site on Friday afternoon.
Whilst this is not the biggest contract in the world, it helps Eco Foundations demonstrate the range of piling solutions that we have to offer including CFA, VCC, King Post Walls, Soil Mixing and Ground Improvement. The client demanded the work was completed as quickly as possible and we did so without any fuss.
