American Deep Foundation, Inc.

One type of timber shoring is the installation of timber lagging between steel H piles to create a shoring wall. The timber is normally hardwood and can be treated if the wall is to remain permanently.

A shoring wall is a wall that is constructed to retain earth, either temporarily or permanently when the material is removed beside it. American Deep Foundation installs temporary and permanent shoring walls.

A shoring wall is typically built by driving interlocking steel sheet piles or by installing steel H piles by drilling or driving and then placing lagging (timber, concrete or steel) between the steel H piles to retain the soil.

Shoring is needed for an excavation when there is not room or it is not desirable to slope the material away from the excavation at a safe angle.

Shoring for an excavation is the installation of a wall to hold up the surrounding soil in order to excavate the material beside the wall. American Deep Foundation installs steel sheet pile shoring walls and H Pile and lagging shoring walls.

Helical piles or piers are sometimes refered to as screw piles. Helical piles are a steel shaft with helixes welded at intervals that can be screwed in the ground to transmit load into the subsurface layers. American Deep Foundation installs all types of helical piles or helical piers, low and high capacity.

Steel sheet piling is a series of interlocking steel sheets driven adjacent to each other to form a wall or a box (cofferdam) in order to contain material or to keep material (typically soil or water) from entering an area. For example a sheet pile wall couild be used to support the walls of an excavation while a permanent basement wall is installed or a sheet pile cofferdam could be used to keep water out while a bridge pier is poured in a river. There are also vinyl sheet piles, alluminum sheet piles and other types of sheetpiles used for particular purposes such as sea walls.

Piling in construction is the installation of a member that allows the use of subsurface materials to carry the load of a sructure. Piles can be concrete piles, steel piles or timber piles. They can be cast in place piles, precast piles or manufactured piles. The can be installed as driven piles, augered piles or drilled piles.

Piles get their load carrying ability from friction, end bearing or a combination of both. A friction pile gets its load carrying capacity from friction between the pile and the surrounding material. An end bearing pile is simply a column transfering the load from the top of the pile to a better stratum of material at the tip of the pile.

Dock Piling are typically driven piles installed in marine environment to support a dock extending over a body of water.

Piling work is the installation of drilled (Augercast Piles, Micropiles, etc.) or driven (Steel H Piles, Timber Piles, Pipe Piles, Precast Piles, Sheet Piles, etc) piles to carry the loads of a structure or to retain earh or water to allow construction to be completed.

A sheet piling retaining wall is a row of interlocking steel sheet piles driven to keep the earth from collapsing to a lower elevation.

Either before or after the piles are driven the area around and between piles in the same cap is excavated. After the piles are driven they are cut off within the cap at an elevation an acceptable distance above the bottom of the pile cap. Reinforcing steel is installed and the cap is formed either using the undisturbed earth surrounding the cap or forms assembled on the jobsite. Concrete is poured into the form after installation of anchor bolts if required.

Piling is required when the ground on which a structure is to sit is not capable of carrying the concentrated loads without an undesirable amount of settlement or differential settlement.

Steel sheet piles are most commonly driven using vibratory hammers. American Deep Foundation has vibratory pile hammers that will grip the pile from the top and also from the side. Usually a steel template is used to keep the sheet piles in a straight line and in the proper location.

CFA is short for a Continuous Flight Augercast pile. American Deep Foundation installs thousands of continuous flight augercast piles by drilling a continuous flight auger into the ground and pumping fluid grout through the center of the auger as it is removed. Reinforcing steel is typically insterted in the augercast pile through the grout while it is still fluid after the auger is withdrawn.

Intallation of one pile can take from five or ten minutes to several hours or even days. The time required depends on the size of the pile, the length of the pile, the material the pile is being installed in, whether the pile is installed in low headroom conditions and numerous other factors.

American Deep Foundation installs different types of mini piles. Micropiles are typically a cased or uncased, reinforced concrete shaft or pile less than 12 inches in diameter that is drilled or driven to transmit the structure load to the bearing stratum. Pin piles are typically small diameter steel pipe piles that are driven into the ground to carry the load.

American Deep Foundation installs both cast in place concrete piles and precast concrete piles. Cast in place concrete piles are typically intalled as augercast piles by drilling a hole in the ground using a continuous flight auger and filling the hole with grout pumped through the auger as it is removed. Precast concrete piles are cast in a precast yard or on the jobsite, cured and then driven in the ground. Steel pipe piles or steel shell piles can also be filled with concrete to become cast in place concrete piles.

Foundation piling is piling that is used to support a structure. It consisted of a drilled pile or a driven pile installed to transmit the load of the structure to a bearing stratum or a combination of bearing stratums below the ground surface.

The key piece of piledriving equipment is the pile hammer. American Deep Foundation owns pile impact hammers ranging from below 1,000 FtLb to 42,000 FtLb. The pile hammer runs in pile leads that keep the hammer in line with the pile and the pile on location. The hammer and leads are handled by a crane. American Deep Foundation owns vibratory pile hammers that hang freely from the crane and also those that are mounted on excavators and can grip the pile from the side or from the top. Vibratory hammers are most commonly used to install steel H piles and steel sheet piles but can also be used for other types of piles such as pipe piles and timber piles.

American Deep Foundation installs helical piers by using a hydraulic drive head attached to an excavator or skid steer loader. The size of the drive head and the piece of equipment will be dependent on the soil conditions and the capacity of the piers installed. Helical piers are screwed into the ground until the torque necessary for continued penetration meets a predetermined value or to a predetermined depth determined by the engineer.

A deep foundation is a foundation element that transfers the load of a structure either to a better bearing stratum below the ground through an end bearing pile or pier, spreads the load through several layers of subsurface material through a friction pile or pier or through a combination of both.

Stone columns are installed by drilling a hole and pouring aggregate into the hole and compacting it in lifts.

Stone columns are a deep foundation or soil improvement method used to increase the bearing capacity of poor soil. They can also speed up the consolidation of granular soil by creating a channel for the water to reach the surface.

An Augercast pile is a cast in place grouted pile is installed by pumping fluid grout through a continuous flight auger as the auger is removed, after the auger tip has reached a predetermined depth or penetration rate. Steel pile reinforcing can be installed though the fluid grout after the auger is removed. American Deep Foundation has installed thousands of grouted augercast piiles throghout the southeatern US since 1996.

Aggregate piers are columns of stone installed by compacting crushed stone into a predrilled hole to improve the bearing capacity of poor soil.