material delivery and mobilization

The first of 8 semi truckloads of materials straight from the port plus a couple of smaller loads from our local supplier

 Trucks were backed to a earth ramp. Some got stuck in the soft dirt of the site and were pulled out as needed. 

We were able to drive our track loader in to the container for easy unloading.

 As each truck was unloaded the materials were separated and  neatly stacked. 

 This is about 1300 piles, 2600 extensions, 600 bolt on extensions, 1300 8 X 8  caps and a ton of bolts.  

It took two trips to mobilize all of the equipment for the job.

The new addition to our fleet. Komatsu PC88 with a 12K drill head. 

Tried and true Case TV370 with custom extendable boom and a 7K drill head.

 It's no track loader, but our mini hoe has a fork lift attachment and was very use full for keeping bulk materials close to where we were working.  

On the interior of the building there are 128 concrete pile caps each containing 3 to 11 helical piles each. A total of 432 helical piles for us to drive for the interior slab.

 The new hoe was put to work. It is a sweet ride and we both prefer it to the track loader. 

This is one of our torque monitors used to record the install torque and provide a detailed graph.  

The correct number of piles were driven into each form.

The protruding portion was then cut to the proper elevation and a 8"X8"x1" helical pile cap was installed. 

After our piles were capped another sub came in and placed the rebar making this pile cap ready for concrete. This whole assembly is a column footer and called a pile cap because it is supported with a deep foundation using piles.

Down the center of building there are 6 larger pile caps with 9 or 11 helical piles each.  Some of these piles were battered, installed at an angle of 25 degrees, and required the 8X8 helical pile cap to be bolted on with 2 bolts. this required an additional step of cutting 4 holes with a torch. 

After about a month off from this job the exterior footer were dug, 

and form boards were placed,

and we went back to work.

Marking, driving piles and digging out obstructions.

We drove staggered piles

and pairs of parallel piles

Around the perimeter the spacing and layout changed 28 times. The perimeter also required battered and opposing piles about every 50 feet. These also required the helical pile cap to be bolted on. 

We also numbered each pile location so that each of the near 1300 graphs would be linked to each pile's actual location.

After damaging a couple piles and winding up some rebar on another we had to stop driving piles and dig out  all of this buried debris.

A few hundred feet later we again had to swap a drill head out for a bucket and dig out some big pieces of concrete culvert. 

As soon as we would finish a section the rebar would be laid ....

and poured within a day or two, sometimes overnight.

This is how the previous pour was connected to the next one.

Somehow we were about 20 helical pile caps short of our last pile. 

Oh, there they are, another crew decided they needed them more than we did and had welded them to some metal plate for a jig to build rebar cages.

 Their boss was gracious enough to drive 4 hours to pick up, and pay for, replacement caps and then had his guys install them the day after we demobilized. 

Just for scale this building is about 9.5 times the playing area of a football field.

At 918 feet by 480 feet ,plus the bastions at each corner, that is one big ass slab!

Each of these columns are bolted to one of the pile caps that we drove piles for.

This is the view from the east.

This is from south and had to be taken from about a quarter mile away to fit the entire building in the shot. 

The roof doesn't even make it to the ends of the slab yet.