Losing a pile is remarkably easy. Here's how

[ToughButterCup]

3:00 am, bolt upright in bed: I didn't check the positions of the piles yesterday. Ahhhh: concreting tomorrow. Bugger. Why the panic? Read on.

 

We have ground improvement stone columns (often misnamed piles) put in by these guys. (Town and Country Vibro )

They gave us a piling design, put in the piles, and a piling log, together with the test results. Spent £6500 putting in over 60 'piles'. I think that's bloody good value - £60 quid each for a stone column  about 4m deep and 500 mm wide. All put in by a very very nice man called Jay.  And tested to way over what is needed.

 

Come to digging out time to lay the strip foundation and I see something suspicious: have a look at this

 

The inset is from the piling design. All we could see (at the time) was that we had cut into the side of a pile, not the top of it (we thought it should be pile 40) which was way off the centre line (light green line)

Cue panic. Cue phone calls to Architect and Tanners. Cue cup of tea.

Outside, crowbar and shovel in hand dig around. And there minding its own business was pile 40: we had cut into the side of pile 39, as indeed we should have done.

The colour of the stone in the stone columns is EXACTLY the same as the surrounding clay. Add a splash of water and you just can't see the pile. I won't forget pile 40 - ever.

 

 

We'll be pouring concrete at 3:00 this afternoon - unless we lose another pile. (I've prodded each and every one: they're all there: thanks Jay).

 

Ian