Piling, Week 1 Progress

The pilers had a few problems last week, including one very wet day, and one rig that broke it's gearbox. However, they have managed to put in 7 piles, two of which are shown below :

Even with a new rig, progress has been slow. The debris is supposed to be blown away from the drilling head (which also has some hammer action) by compressed air, but the new rig (see below) is more heavy duty than the old one, and they think that the compressor is not supplying enough air. The drilling head keeps becoming blocked, slowing progress. A bigger compressor should be with us Monday morning, and then they hope to zip through the remaining piles.

Pile depths have been a little longer than we expected. I think the deepest measured when we had the ground testing done back in September was 6.5m, but we have one at 9m and one at 8m put in this week. Each pile is recorded on a data sheet, so we should get full details when the job is completed.