Five years ago, I walked by a construction site where the NederFund company was setting up their concrete screw piling equipment. More background information about the whole process and the machinery can be found in the 2020 article.
Last week, the same company was working at full throttle on another location nearby, featuring two of their drilling rigs.
The MAN 8×4 concrete mixer trucks are feeding the tracked pumps which, in their turn, are feeding the drilling rigs (soil out, pole foundation in).
Later, on my way back home, two bigger concrete mixer trucks had arrived at the scene. Here’s a Volvo FMX 10×4*6 with a Liebherr body, the drum capacity of such five-axle mixer trucks ranges from 15 to 17 m³ (19.6 to 22.2 yd³).
The livery of the trucks tells us that the supplier of the ready-mix concrete is Heidelberg Materials, one of the world’s largest building materials companies (simply quoting their website here).
A closer look at NederFund’s Lebotec 50-22B, its maximum drilling depth is 20 meters (65’7”). The hose on the left is connected to the concrete pump, being filled by the Volvo FMX.
And a MAN 10×4*6 truck is filling the other pump. Mebin -the company name on the drum- is a subsidiary of Heidelberg Materials.
Raised all the way to the top, the hollow auger conveyor and the hose. On the left, in the foreground, some stacks of reinforcement steel.
Same location, a few days later. We saw what they did there.
Related article, an up-close encounter with a 10×4*6 concrete mixer truck:
I would’ve skipped school to watch this. Come to think of it, I’d skip work to do the same, now!
Big machinery at work, loved to watch it as a kid, still love to watch it 50 years later…
Are screw pilings needed because of soil conditions? Where I live is volcanic rock so foundations are very simple
Yes, it’s swampy soil everywhere. No matter how deep you dig, you’ll never hit rock bottom.
Interesting variation. I’ve seen plenty of pile drivers, including within a hundred feet of my shop entrance, but never a screw pile driver. I wonder what the limit is, depth wise and how it compares to conventional ones.
The main advantages of this specific process are no vibrations (especially important when there are other buildings/houses close to the construction site) and much, much less noise.
The NederFund company can drill 27 meters (88’7”) deep with their biggest machine, according to their website.
All-steel foundation poles also exist, to be screwed into the ground.
There are plenty of other screw piling options, see link below (in Dutch, yet with many pictures and drawings):
https://www.joostdevree.nl/shtmls/schroefpaal.shtml
Amazing some of the construction techniques used nowadays. Heidelberg bought the Lehigh Cement plant near where we used to live in Union Bridge MD, a huge plant that dominated the landscape as well as spewing dust everywhere, but they did manage to clean it up somewhat.