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Your First Stop for Piledriving Technology News

When a South Florida contractor was faced with driving 24-inch concrete piles in 60-ft lengths, “no problem” he thought. Weight soon became a huge issue but guys from A.P.E. solved the problem.
A D19-42 was selected in order to to get the 80-ton capacity needed. There were several strange looks as the D-19 arrived at the jobsite. The hammer looked small next to the 24-inch pile and in the 32-inch leads, it looked even smaller. There was some doubt among the pilebucks that this hammer would actually drive the pile. Several minutes later, the pile was down and the doubt removed.
The important lesson here: it’s not the size of your hammer, it’s the know how that gets the job done!

Kiewit Pacific of Northern California is one of the biggest General Contractors in the world. The ongoing Benicia Bridge Project has been one of their challenges with huge pipe pile to template piling. In these final stages of the project Kiewit must pull the template piles that are approximately 170’ long with 100’ of embedment into the tough Bay Mud soils. “These pile have been in the ground for over two years with a tremendous set-up” says Ed Taylor, Superintendent of this phase. The tough Merrit Sands proved more than a match for the APE 300 vibro which only proved to shake the portion of pile that wasn’t embedded into the merit sands. Even the new work horse of the industry, the powerful APE model 200-6 proved to be unworthy by itself to do the job as it ripped the tops off of the piles. This test was a prelude to the second phase that will come soon. “We manufactured a welded plate with high flow water jet pump at put 500psi which gave us approximately 300 tons of uplift” Says Ed, “even with this method and the vibro we still could not overcome the merit sands.” Phase two will consist of an APE D62-22 to smack the pile and jar it free of the merit sands and then pull using the APE 200-6 vibro. Look to the next story soon to come.

When Linde-Griffith Construction of Newark, NJ needed a vibro to drive sheet pile near an existing bridge, they called APE Northeast for the APE 250 Variable Moment Vibro. The APE Variable Moment vibros are designed to minimize radial vibration in the soil during start up and shut down of the vibro, when these vibrations are at the highest levels during operation.

For more info call Paul Kuzik at 201-400-8356.

Toronto:

Recently Brooks Dean of Dean Construction called with an immediate need for a vibro to drive sheet piles into Toronto Harbor. Dean, among several other foundation contractors, have been involved in the ongoing revitalization and expansion of the Toronto waterfront. In this instance sheets are being driven to shore the waterfront for installation of a new ferry boat dock that will access the Toronto Public Airport located on a small island in Lake Ontario. A J&M 216 was sent in and made short work of the sheet piles.
This past January APE sent in a D19 the drive piles for an extension of the existing boardwalk which lines the beautiful waterfront area. Thanks again to Dean for coming to APE/J&M for their foundation needs.

Using Ape equipment consisting of one Ape 200 vibro, one Ape 200T vibro, one Ape 200-6 vibro, one Ape 300 vibro, one Ape/J&M 66/80 vibro and one Ape/J&M model 115 hydraulic hammer, Kiewitt Southern installed a pump station designed to move water out of New Orleans in the event of flooding. The Orleans Avenue Canal project was completed before the June 1st deadline and consisted of four sixty foot cells, five gates and 10 pumps capable of moving 115,000 gallons of water per minute. Kiewitt Southern equipment manager Jeff Sarles said ” The Ape equipment worked flawlessly which played a big part in completing the job on time and that the service support was excellent”.

APE has supplied the D19-42’s that are driving the 110 ft long 12″ H-Piles for the foundation of a new bridge over the Susquehanna River in Northeast PA. PennDOT spec’s are 20 blows to the inch, which is extreme duty for any impct hammer and the APE D19-42’s showed that they can tackle the toughest jobs around.

When “McLean Contracting” began work on the new 98 million dollar Battlefield Blvd. interchange in Chesapeake Virginia they knew there was one area of piledriving that had some of them scratching their heads. This was a very low head room area for the south abutment piles that had high tension power lines over head and a live rail road track below, not your normal field conditions. McLeans project staff contacted APE Mid-Atlantic branch to see what solution we could work out. We all decided that the APE 7.5 low head room hammer mounted in a 20′ section of leads with a stab section on the bottom would do the trick ! Mind you that they had only 40′ of over head clearence, so the 12″ OD pipe piles had to be driven in 12 foot lengths. McLean configured their crane with the least amount of boom as possible and placed and drove the 1st 12′ sections of pile with out a hitch. They have spliced and driven the 2nd sections with no problems what so ever. APE / J&M wishes McLean a safe and productive project. Contact your nearest APE / J&M branch for all of your low head room applications.

Marenco Marine Construction LTD of Barbados, West Indies took delivery of their new 2006 APE D19 and Fixed Lead Components this month and will begin driving as soon as the Pile arrive from Trinidad. They installed the APE Pin together 26″ Open Box leads on their new Sumitomo 55 Ton Crane with few modifications, the Boom point connector was an exact fit using only field measurements. Hats off to David & Tony Cooper for their help with the Crane information.

Marenco also just ordered a J&M Model 218 Pile Crusher / Cutter to cut the pile down to grade. APE will be matching the J&M Model 218 Crusher to an existing Power Unit Owned by Marenco. The job has approximately (700) 12″ & 14″ Octagonal Concrete Pile. We look forward to a long relationship with Marenco, who perform Construction projects throughout the lower Caribbean.

Please call me with any Pile Driving equipment needs throughout the Caribbean, Florida and Central America.

After completing many of their plumb piles, Fraser River has now started driving the batter piles on the elevated rail link. With the versatile bottom drive system the hammer and leader guides directly to a fixed “A” frame.

The full design of the “A” frame was finalized by Don Reid based on concept dwgs during the bid stage.

For more information on how APE can assist with your next job contact your local satellite.