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Your First Stop for Piledriving Technology News

Can stop King Kong from helping Aldridge Electric drive 9.5ft and 10.5ft diameter casing to grade for power line project in snowy and bitterly cold northern New England.

The nature of power line construction is that time is of the essence and the jobsite does not shut down for inconveniences like a foot of snow. Knowing that, Aldridge chooses APE and the reliability they have come to know and trust, as well as the knowledge that if something does go wrong, a foot of snow will not keep APE personnel from being on site and doing whatever it takes…

Trident Construction recently purchased a new APE D19-42 and leads to add to their piledriving capability.

I recently visited their jobsite to set it up and watched the hammer run flawlessly. Trident is driving pipe piles as part of a Canadian Coast Guard pier reconstruction. APE has been enjoying an increased presence in Canada and look forward to continued expansion of business with our Canadian friends.

The Walsh/PCL Joint Venture in Connecticut on the Pearl Harbor Memorial Bridge replacement project came to APE with a dilemma. They needed to install a work trestle using 24″ open ended pipe piles, some of which have to be driven underneath the existing bridge structure.

APE came up with a system that includes an APE Tandem 150 vibro that allows the piles to extend thru a centerhole clamp and above the height of the hammer to maximize headroom. Then the piles are impacted in to capacity with an APE D62-42 diesel hammer in a specially built short section of leads.

The DHJ-85 piledriving rig built for APE by Nippon Sharyo of Japan has now received prototype approval for use in NY City by the NY City department of Buildings. Prototype approval means that our rig can be approved for use on your NY City jobsite with ease.

Call APE Northeast at 1-888-217-7524 for more information.

CD Perry is currently at work on a very interesting piledriving job across the Hudson River from Albany NY as a subcontractor to LG Constructors. Faced with many challenges during the bid phase, CD Perry approached APE and together we came up with a system that would allow for the successful driving of the piles while meeting an extremely strict noise ordinance.

The design called for driving 12×84 H-Piles between 60ft and 75ft long thru zero blowcount material into glacial till ultimately achieving a 200ton capacity. However local noise ordinances limited the maximum noise that could be generated at the protery line from the piledriving operation to 65 decibels, which is quieter than a normal conversation between 2 people. Taking into consideration that using an impact hammer on an h-pile when 75ft of it is above ground greatly amplifies the impact, in a textbook example of line source noise, the determination was made to vibrate the piles in thru the very soft upper layers of soil to the top of the till. Once in the ground, with less of a line source,the pile could be impacted and create less noise.

The plans called for a dynamic test pile program to assure capacity could be achieved, which was the perfect testing ground to see if this system would keep the noise below 65dB. The piles were vibrated in, then impacted to the required capacity without any problem. However the 65 decibel noise requirement at the property line was exceeded by 10 decibels. A way to shave 10 dB off of the noise being produced by the diesel hammer driving the h-beams needed to be found.

This was accomplished by building a noise shroud around the leads for the diesel hammer using fireproof noise cancelling blankets. CD Perry designed and fabricated a “cocoon” on the lower section of leads around the diesel hammer and pile, and a 2nd test pile program was undertaken. The 2nd test showed that the decibel levels at the property line were now below the maximum allowable and the project could move forward.

Currently CD Perry has 3 vibros; an APE Model 50, a J&M Model 216 and J&M Model 11-23, all riding in APE 8×26 leads, to vibrate in the h-piles. Then they use two APE D19-42 diesel hammers with the noise abatement system on each set of leads, as well as an APE 150T vibro to drive the sheeting that is part of the foundation contract.

Blakeslee Arpaia & Chapman was founded over 160 years ago and has evolved into a multi-faceted company that is often asked to tackle challenging projects that require unique solutions.

Recently they were asked to drive h-piles at a Connecticut refinery for a gas pipeline relocation. The only problem was that the pipeline was to be routed along the edge of the shoreline in an area where getting heavy equipment into was impossible. This meant that the piles would need to be driven from the water. However the water was shallow, even at high tide, and was too shallow to allow any work to be done at low tide.

Because the water level was only high enough for a barge at high tide, a barge with a large crane would have to be floated in and all of the work would have to be done while the tide was high. The barge would then need to be taken out to deeper water at low tide.

However, a crane, even a large one, has its limits when boomed out such a distance. This created a problem with coming up with a hammer and leads to drive the pile. Blakeslee Arpaia & Chapman approached APE with this dilema and the solution recommended was an APE D8 diesel hammer in 21″ leads. This combination gave them a driving system that was light enough to allow them to reach from a barge to drive the h-piles on shore with their Manitowoc 3950 crane.

It sounds like another plot to a science fiction movie, but there is no Godzilla written into this script. There is only the evil Ohio River, large diameter pipe piles, and many many panel walls consisting of 5 flat sheetpiles that need to be vanquished by our hero, King Kong.

APE supplied 2 King Kongs to the Olmsted Dam project that Washington Group and Alberici are joint ventured on in Olmsted, Illinois on the Ohio River. This project is the last part of the Olmsted Lock and Dam replacement. Construction of the lock was completed in a previous project phase several years ago, and is visible in one of the attached pictures.

APE has supplied 2 complete King Kongs that have special designed multi clamp systems that will enable the hammer to drive wall segments that consist of five PS27.5 flat sheetpiles at the same time, as well as several caisson beam and clamp combinations.

Cianbro is a large self performing general contractor based in Pittsfield, Maine who this year decided to start replacing their aging fleet of competitor made vibratory hammers. After studying all of the options available from the different manufacturers, Cianbro decided that they would be best served to not go with the least expensive option but rather with the option that gave them the best possible value. They decided to purchase an APE Model 150T vibro with a Model 350 Power Unit as well as a Model 200 Vibro with a Model 475 Power Unit. Pictured is their Model 200 driving h-piles.

APE Northeast was recently contacted by Helen Godzic of Marcellus, NY. She was involved in a project in Syracuse where they were trying to determine if the driven pile foundation of a 3 story parking garage built in Syracuse at the end of the 1950’s could handle the additional load of the 2 story vertical expansion that the property owner wanted to build.

One of the problems faced in trying to determine pile capacity in an active parking garage was that the testing would have to be carried out on the ground floor of a parking garage that had only 10ft of headroom. Could testing be done in this confined space?

After ruling out a static load test because of cost, GRL was consulted and it was determined that dynamically testing the piles was the best alternative, if a suitable hammer could be procured. This was when APE was contacted, and we came up with a combination of our 7.5 Hydraulic Impact Hammer, mounted in one of our forklift adapters.

It was determined that 1 pile in two pile caps on opposite sides of the garage would be exposed. The piles were mandrell-driven shell piles filled with rebar and concrete. The tops of the piles were about 5 feet below grade, so the contractor built a follower that consisted of a bonnet that sat on top of the pipe, transitioning to an h-pile. Using a 16,000 lb forklift, the 7.5 was positioned onto the h-pile follower, and the test was carried out, producing results better than anyone could have anticipated.

APE takes pride in our ability to offer unique solutions to the unique problems of good people like Helen.

Recently a Boston area contractor took delivery of an APE Model 200-6 to drive permanent cold rolled sheets as part of a sewage pump station interceptor replacement project. Due to the urgency of this project, the 200-6 was selected because of a desire to be absolutely sure that the hammer was capable of driving thru a layer of cobbles 15ft down. As you can see, the 200-6 had no difficulty in accomplishing its mission.