Let's drive some piles

[mowingman]

Here are some big cranes we had on a pile driving job back in about 1975. This was in near Charleston, S.C. I believe we had about 1500 piles to install. Concrete piles were one piece and 60' long. The steel H piles were about 120' long and welded in 2 sections. I remember we had a LOT of failed concrete piles and had to drive a new one for each pile that failed. The pile driving rigs ran on compressed air. I know that is part of the reason I can't hear well now. The exhaust would make your ear drums hurt.

 

[Ronsii]

I can't imagine concrete holding up too well to driving... or is it something that is done all the time?

 

[mowingman]

It is/was done a lot. They put about 6 pieces of 3/4" plywood in the pile driver head to soften the blow on the pile head. The piles went down pretty good, most of the time. You could tell when one was going to fail as it would start spalling concrete chunks right before it broke.

 

[mitch504]

Building I-26?

 

[mowingman]

No, we were building a big welding facility for General Dynamics. The place was designed to build aluminum spheres to haul natural gas from Algeria to the U.S. This was probably in 1975. They were going to put 5 into each oceangoing ship. They had tried building them outside, but the temperature changed so much during the day that they could not get the sections to fit together for welding. Our company designed enclosed structures where they could weld indoors. I think the plant is still there, in "Goose Creek"?? S.C.
Jeff

 

[Hank R]

Sounds like you were on some very interesting job sites. Thanks for sharing

 

[colson04]

There's a place in Australia that specializes in pre-cast concrete posts for livestock fencing. These posts are meant to be driven in like a wooden post with a pile driver and the major selling point is they don't burn or rot. They have through holes cast into them to run the wire through so no other pieces are needed when stringing fence.

 

[mowingman]

There's a place in Australia that specializes in pre-cast concrete posts for livestock fencing. These posts are meant to be driven in like a wooden post with a pile driver and the major selling point is they don't burn or rot. They have through holes cast into them to run the wire through so no other pieces are needed when stringing fence.

That is pretty neat. I have not seen that around here, or anywhere actually. In Kansas I saw fence posts that were cut out of limestone. These were used as corner posts back in the old days.
Jeff

 

[Ronsii]

I knew a guy that made some good sized concrete posts a long time ago... but it wasn't cost effective compared to wood so he never sold many.

 

[Tugger2]

Good old Vulcan hammers.Things tend to break a lot on them after a couple of hundred piles. Drove hundreds of timber piles with this 06 and a #1 Vulcan. Thanks for the pictures.

 

[mowingman]

Did you wear earplugs? The exhaust on those Vulcan hammers is pretty intense.
Do wood piles tend to splinter or break much? I have never been around wooden piling when it was being driven into place.
Jeff

 

[Tugger2]

Yes i did wear earplugs most of the time, amazingly my hearing is pretty good still. The worst of the exhaust on those Vulcans is the hunks of ice that would blow off if you were not keeping the air dryed . We would go thru cases of methyl hydrate.That job was 3000 densification piles ,driven in poorly investigated ground. They finally paid us per pile whether it went in 10 ft. or all the way. Lots of breakage as most of the piles were hemlock and way off being actual piling grade.Some of the heads were close to bursting into flames when they reached cutoff height on the ones that didnt break. 8 months of fun n games. I like your picture from the 70s./Good old days .

 

[Hank R]

Tugger2 all the wood pilings one sees around the Island and coast what kind of wood are they??

 

[mitch504]

Yep, it's still there. Goose Creek is about 40 miles from me.

 

[mowingman]

Yep, it's still there. Goose Creek is about 40 miles from me.

Well, I guess we built it pretty solid then. That was a long time ago, and it has seen a few bad storms since then.

 

[petepilot]

watched some concrete pilings being pulled from the turtle river near Brunswick ga couple years ago. huge barge huge crane and 4 huge air compressors. they would punch 3-4" pipe down along side them clamp the pipe to the piers turn the air loose. the crane would tighten up put a steady pull on them then kinda shake em a little`15 to 20 minutes of that they would come slowly out the mud. that was probably drill rod they were shoving down cause none was bent

 

[old-iron-habit]

I can't imagine concrete holding up too well to driving... or is it something that is done all the time?

We drove hundreds of 18" octagonal concrete piles us to 140 ft long in Long Beach Harbor when I worked for GF Atkinson back in the 80s. We modified many piers to accommodate the then new supertankers. We would stick a 10" thick laminated plywood block in the bonnet for a drive cushion. When the cushion started on fire or started to kick due to one side failing faster we would pry the plug out and install a new one. If we never reached the desired bearing we would use a steel 12' long collar and add on 20 ft. Interesting thing about concrete pile is that at 120 ft the point is still receiving 90+ percent of the hammers energy. A 84 pound per foot H beam would only have 15% of hammer energy at the tip at that depth. The steel loses the rest in steel compression each blow. The concrete has little compression.

 

[old-iron-habit]

Did you wear earplugs? The exhaust on those Vulcan hammers is pretty intense.
Do wood piles tend to splinter or break much? I have never been around wooden piling when it was being driven into place.
Jeff[/QUOTE

Wood pilings were often used in 1,000s of smaller bridges and many other low load bearing projects around the nation. Cheap and easy when the load bearing is not high. We normally drove them with swinging leads and used the dirty diesel hammers, mostly Delmag's.

 

[old-iron-habit]

Good old Vulcan hammers.Things tend to break a lot on them after a couple of hundred piles. Drove hundreds of timber piles with this 06 and a #1 Vulcan. Thanks for the pictures.View attachment 214342

That looks like a awful big hammer being used for them sticks. No wonder they shattered. One could throttle them down and try to get a half stroke but that never seemed to work consistently. I believe Vulcan was bought out by Conmaco. That hammer looks to be about the size of a Conmaco 200 at about 40 thousand ft. pounds of energy per blow.

 

[Tugger2]

Tugger2 all the wood pilings one sees around the Island and coast what kind of wood are they??

Most piling is fir ,especially if creo treated. The odd time we have run across cedar piles,kind of like finding gold.